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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Half a Life-time Ago, by Elizabeth Gaskell
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Half a Life-time Ago
+
+Author: Elizabeth Gaskell
+
+Release Date: April 21, 2000 [eBook #2547]
+[Most recently updated: April 20, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: David Price
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HALF A LIFE-TIME AGO ***
+
+
+
+
+Half a Life-time Ago
+
+by Elizabeth Gaskell
+
+
+Contents
+
+ CHAPTER I.
+ CHAPTER II.
+ CHAPTER III.
+ CHAPTER IV.
+ CHAPTER V.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+Half a life-time ago, there lived in one of the Westmoreland dales a
+single woman, of the name of Susan Dixon. She was owner of the small
+farm-house where she resided, and of some thirty or forty acres of land
+by which it was surrounded. She had also an hereditary right to a
+sheep-walk, extending to the wild fells that overhang Blea Tarn. In the
+language of the country she was a Stateswoman. Her house is yet to be
+seen on the Oxenfell road, between Skelwith and Coniston. You go along
+a moorland track, made by the carts that occasionally came for turf
+from the Oxenfell. A brook babbles and brattles by the wayside, giving
+you a sense of companionship, which relieves the deep solitude in which
+this way is usually traversed. Some miles on this side of Coniston
+there is a farmstead—a gray stone house, and a square of farm-buildings
+surrounding a green space of rough turf, in the midst of which stands a
+mighty, funereal umbrageous yew, making a solemn shadow, as of death,
+in the very heart and centre of the light and heat of the brightest
+summer day. On the side away from the house, this yard slopes down to a
+dark-brown pool, which is supplied with fresh water from the
+overflowings of a stone cistern, into which some rivulet of the brook
+before-mentioned continually and melodiously falls bubbling. The cattle
+drink out of this cistern. The household bring their pitchers and fill
+them with drinking-water by a dilatory, yet pretty, process. The
+water-carrier brings with her a leaf of the hound’s-tongue fern, and,
+inserting it in the crevice of the gray rock, makes a cool, green spout
+for the sparkling stream.
+
+The house is no specimen, at the present day, of what it was in the
+lifetime of Susan Dixon. Then, every small diamond pane in the windows
+glittered with cleanliness. You might have eaten off the floor; you
+could see yourself in the pewter plates and the polished oaken awmry,
+or dresser, of the state kitchen into which you entered. Few strangers
+penetrated further than this room. Once or twice, wandering tourists,
+attracted by the lonely picturesqueness of the situation, and the
+exquisite cleanliness of the house itself, made their way into this
+house-place, and offered money enough (as they thought) to tempt the
+hostess to receive them as lodgers. They would give no trouble, they
+said; they would be out rambling or sketching all day long; would be
+perfectly content with a share of the food which she provided for
+herself; or would procure what they required from the Waterhead Inn at
+Coniston. But no liberal sum—no fair words—moved her from her stony
+manner, or her monotonous tone of indifferent refusal. No persuasion
+could induce her to show any more of the house than that first room; no
+appearance of fatigue procured for the weary an invitation to sit down
+and rest; and if one more bold and less delicate did so without being
+asked, Susan stood by, cold and apparently deaf, or only replying by
+the briefest monosyllables, till the unwelcome visitor had departed.
+Yet those with whom she had dealings, in the way of selling her cattle
+or her farm produce, spoke of her as keen after a bargain—a hard one to
+have to do with; and she never spared herself exertion or fatigue, at
+market or in the field, to make the most of her produce. She led the
+hay-makers with her swift, steady rake, and her noiseless evenness of
+motion. She was about among the earliest in the market, examining
+samples of oats, pricing them, and then turning with grim satisfaction
+to her own cleaner corn.
+
+She was served faithfully and long by those who were rather her
+fellow-labourers than her servants. She was even and just in her
+dealings with them. If she was peculiar and silent, they knew her, and
+knew that she might be relied on. Some of them had known her from her
+childhood; and deep in their hearts was an unspoken—almost
+unconscious—pity for her, for they knew her story, though they never
+spoke of it.
+
+Yes; the time had been when that tall, gaunt, hard-featured, angular
+woman—who never smiled, and hardly ever spoke an unnecessary word—had
+been a fine-looking girl, bright-spirited and rosy; and when the hearth
+at the Yew Nook had been as bright as she, with family love and
+youthful hope and mirth. Fifty or fifty-one years ago, William Dixon
+and his wife Margaret were alive; and Susan, their daughter, was about
+eighteen years old—ten years older than the only other child, a boy
+named after his father. William and Margaret Dixon were rather superior
+people, of a character belonging—as far as I have seen—exclusively to
+the class of Westmoreland and Cumberland statesmen—just, independent,
+upright; not given to much speaking; kind-hearted, but not
+demonstrative; disliking change, and new ways, and new people; sensible
+and shrewd; each household self-contained, and its members having
+little curiosity as to their neighbours, with whom they rarely met for
+any social intercourse, save at the stated times of sheep-shearing and
+Christmas; having a certain kind of sober pleasure in amassing money,
+which occasionally made them miserable (as they call miserly people up
+in the north) in their old age; reading no light or ephemeral
+literature, but the grave, solid books brought round by the pedlars
+(such as the “Paradise Lost” and “Regained,’” “The Death of Abel,” “The
+Spiritual Quixote,” and “The Pilgrim’s Progress”), were to be found in
+nearly every house: the men occasionally going off laking, _i.e._
+playing, _i.e._ drinking for days together, and having to be hunted up
+by anxious wives, who dared not leave their husbands to the chances of
+the wild precipitous roads, but walked miles and miles, lantern in
+hand, in the dead of night, to discover and guide the solemnly-drunken
+husband home; who had a dreadful headache the next day, and the day
+after that came forth as grave, and sober, and virtuous looking as if
+there were no such thing as malt and spirituous liquors in the world;
+and who were seldom reminded of their misdoings by their wives, to whom
+such occasional outbreaks were as things of course, when once the
+immediate anxiety produced by them was over. Such were—such are—the
+characteristics of a class now passing away from the face of the land,
+as their compeers, the yeomen, have done before them. Of such was
+William Dixon. He was a shrewd clever farmer, in his day and
+generation, when shrewdness was rather shown in the breeding and
+rearing of sheep and cattle than in the cultivation of land. Owing to
+this character of his, statesmen from a distance from beyond Kendal, or
+from Borrowdale, of greater wealth than he, would send their sons to be
+farm-servants for a year or two with him, in order to learn some of his
+methods before setting up on land of their own. When Susan, his
+daughter, was about seventeen, one Michael Hurst was farm-servant at
+Yew Nook. He worked with the master, and lived with the family, and was
+in all respects treated as an equal, except in the field. His father
+was a wealthy statesman at Wythburne, up beyond Grasmere; and through
+Michael’s servitude the families had become acquainted, and the Dixons
+went over to the High Beck sheep-shearing, and the Hursts came down by
+Red Bank and Loughrig Tarn and across the Oxenfell when there was the
+Christmas-tide feasting at Yew Nook. The fathers strolled round the
+fields together, examined cattle and sheep, and looked knowing over
+each other’s horses. The mothers inspected the dairies and household
+arrangements, each openly admiring the plans of the other, but secretly
+preferring their own. Both fathers and mothers cast a glance from time
+to time at Michael and Susan, who were thinking of nothing less than
+farm or dairy, but whose unspoken attachment was, in all ways, so
+suitable and natural a thing that each parent rejoiced over it,
+although with characteristic reserve it was never spoken about—not even
+between husband and wife.
+
+Susan had been a strong, independent, healthy girl; a clever help to
+her mother, and a spirited companion to her father; more of a man in
+her (as he often said) than her delicate little brother ever would
+have. He was his mother’s darling, although she loved Susan well. There
+was no positive engagement between Michael and Susan—I doubt whether
+even plain words of love had been spoken; when one winter-time Margaret
+Dixon was seized with inflammation consequent upon a neglected cold.
+She had always been strong and notable, and had been too busy to attend
+to the early symptoms of illness. It would go off, she said to the
+woman who helped in the kitchen; or if she did not feel better when
+they had got the hams and bacon out of hand, she would take some
+herb-tea and nurse up a bit. But Death could not wait till the hams and
+bacon were cured: he came on with rapid strides, and shooting arrows of
+portentous agony. Susan had never seen illness—never knew how much she
+loved her mother till now, when she felt a dreadful, instinctive
+certainty that she was losing her. Her mind was thronged with
+recollections of the many times she had slighted her mother’s wishes;
+her heart was full of the echoes of careless and angry replies that she
+had spoken. What would she not now give to have opportunities of
+service and obedience, and trials of her patience and love, for that
+dear mother who lay gasping in torture! And yet Susan had been a good
+girl and an affectionate daughter.
+
+The sharp pain went off, and delicious ease came on; yet still her
+mother sunk. In the midst of this languid peace she was dying. She
+motioned Susan to her bedside, for she could only whisper; and then,
+while the father was out of the room, she spoke as much to the eager,
+hungering eyes of her daughter by the motion of her lips, as by the
+slow, feeble sounds of her voice.
+
+“Susan, lass, thou must not fret. It is God’s will, and thou wilt have
+a deal to do. Keep father straight if thou canst; and if he goes out
+Ulverstone ways, see that thou meet him before he gets to the Old
+Quarry. It’s a dree bit for a man who has had a drop. As for lile
+Will”—Here the poor woman’s face began to work and her fingers to move
+nervously as they lay on the bed-quilt—“lile Will will miss me most of
+all. Father’s often vexed with him because he’s not a quick strong lad;
+he is not, my poor lile chap. And father thinks he’s saucy, because he
+cannot always stomach oat-cake and porridge. There’s better than three
+pound in th’ old black tea-pot on the top shelf of the cupboard. Just
+keep a piece of loaf-bread by you, Susan dear, for Will to come to when
+he’s not taken his breakfast. I have, may be, spoilt him; but there’ll
+be no one to spoil him now.”
+
+She began to cry a low, feeble cry, and covered up her face that Susan
+might not see her. That dear face! those precious moments while yet the
+eyes could look out with love and intelligence. Susan laid her head
+down close by her mother’s ear.
+
+“Mother I’ll take tent of Will. Mother, do you hear? He shall not want
+ought I can give or get for him, least of all the kind words which you
+had ever ready for us both. Bless you! bless you! my own mother.”
+
+“Thou’lt promise me that, Susan, wilt thou? I can die easy if thou’lt
+take charge of him. But he’s hardly like other folk; he tries father at
+times, though I think father’ll be tender of him when I’m gone, for my
+sake. And, Susan, there’s one thing more. I never spoke on it for fear
+of the bairn being called a tell-tale, but I just comforted him up. He
+vexes Michael at times, and Michael has struck him before now. I did
+not want to make a stir; but he’s not strong, and a word from thee,
+Susan, will go a long way with Michael.”
+
+Susan was as red now as she had been pale before; it was the first time
+that her influence over Michael had been openly acknowledged by a third
+person, and a flash of joy came athwart the solemn sadness of the
+moment. Her mother had spoken too much, and now came on the miserable
+faintness. She never spoke again coherently; but when her children and
+her husband stood by her bedside, she took lile Will’s hand and put it
+into Susan’s, and looked at her with imploring eyes. Susan clasped her
+arms round Will, and leaned her head upon his little curly one, and
+vowed within herself to be as a mother to him.
+
+Henceforward she was all in all to her brother. She was a more spirited
+and amusing companion to him than his mother had been, from her greater
+activity, and perhaps, also, from her originality of character, which
+often prompted her to perform her habitual actions in some new and racy
+manner. She was tender to lile Will when she was prompt and sharp with
+everybody else—with Michael most of all; for somehow the girl felt
+that, unprotected by her mother, she must keep up her own dignity, and
+not allow her lover to see how strong a hold he had upon her heart. He
+called her hard and cruel, and left her so; and she smiled softly to
+herself, when his back was turned, to think how little he guessed how
+deeply he was loved. For Susan was merely comely and fine looking;
+Michael was strikingly handsome, admired by all the girls for miles
+round, and quite enough of a country coxcomb to know it and plume
+himself accordingly. He was the second son of his father; the eldest
+would have High Beck farm, of course, but there was a good penny in the
+Kendal bank in store for Michael. When harvest was over, he went to
+Chapel Langdale to learn to dance; and at night, in his merry moods, he
+would do his steps on the flag floor of the Yew Nook kitchen, to the
+secret admiration of Susan, who had never learned dancing, but who
+flouted him perpetually, even while she admired, in accordance with the
+rule she seemed to have made for herself about keeping him at a
+distance so long as he lived under the same roof with her. One evening
+he sulked at some saucy remark of hers; he sitting in the chimney
+corner with his arms on his knees, and his head bent forwards, lazily
+gazing into the wood-fire on the hearth, and luxuriating in rest after
+a hard day’s labour; she sitting among the geraniums on the long, low
+window-seat, trying to catch the last slanting rays of the autumnal
+light to enable her to finish stitching a shirt-collar for Will, who
+lounged full length on the flags at the other side of the hearth to
+Michael, poking the burning wood from time to time with a long
+hazel-stick to bring out the leap of glittering sparks.
+
+“And if you can dance a threesome reel, what good does it do ye?” asked
+Susan, looking askance at Michael, who had just been vaunting his
+proficiency. “Does it help you plough, reap, or even climb the rocks to
+take a raven’s nest? If I were a man, I’d be ashamed to give in to such
+softness.”
+
+“If you were a man, you’d be glad to do anything which made the pretty
+girls stand round and admire.”
+
+“As they do to you, eh! Ho, Michael, that would not be my way o’ being
+a man!”
+
+“What would then?” asked he, after a pause, during which he had
+expected in vain that she would go on with her sentence. No answer.
+
+“I should not like you as a man, Susy; you’d be too hard and
+headstrong.”
+
+“Am I hard and headstrong?” asked she, with as indifferent a tone as
+she could assume, but which yet had a touch of pique in it. His quick
+ear detected the inflexion.
+
+“No, Susy! You’re wilful at times, and that’s right enough. I don’t
+like a girl without spirit. There’s a mighty pretty girl comes to the
+dancing class; but she is all milk and water. Her eyes never flash like
+yours when you’re put out; why, I can see them flame across the kitchen
+like a cat’s in the dark. Now, if you were a man, I should feel queer
+before those looks of yours; as it is, I rather like them, because—”
+
+“Because what?” asked she, looking up and perceiving that he had stolen
+close up to her.
+
+“Because I can make all right in this way,” said he, kissing her
+suddenly.
+
+“Can you?” said she, wrenching herself out of his grasp and panting,
+half with rage. “Take that, by way of proof that making right is none
+so easy.” And she boxed his ears pretty sharply. He went back to his
+seat discomfited and out of temper. She could no longer see to look,
+even if her face had not burnt and her eyes dazzled, but she did not
+choose to move her seat, so she still preserved her stooping attitude
+and pretended to go on sewing.
+
+“Eleanor Hebthwaite may be milk-and-water,” muttered he, “but—Confound
+thee, lad! what art thou doing?” exclaimed Michael, as a great piece of
+burning wood was cast into his face by an unlucky poke of Will’s. “Thou
+great lounging, clumsy chap, I’ll teach thee better!” and with one or
+two good round kicks he sent the lad whimpering away into the
+back-kitchen. When he had a little recovered himself from his passion,
+he saw Susan standing before him, her face looking strange and almost
+ghastly by the reversed position of the shadows, arising from the
+firelight shining upwards right under it.
+
+“I tell thee what, Michael,” said she, “that lad’s motherless, but not
+friendless.”
+
+“His own father leathers him, and why should not I, when he’s given me
+such a burn on my face?” said Michael, putting up his hand to his cheek
+as if in pain.
+
+“His father’s his father, and there is nought more to be said. But if
+he did burn thee, it was by accident, and not o’ purpose; as thou
+kicked him, it’s a mercy if his ribs are not broken.”
+
+“He howls loud enough, I’m sure. I might ha’ kicked many a lad twice as
+hard, and they’d ne’er ha’ said ought but ‘damn ye;’ but yon lad must
+needs cry out like a stuck pig if one touches him;” replied Michael,
+sullenly.
+
+Susan went back to the window-seat, and looked absently out of the
+window at the drifting clouds for a minute or two, while her eyes
+filled with tears. Then she got up and made for the outer door which
+led into the back-kitchen. Before she reached it, however, she heard a
+low voice, whose music made her thrill, say—
+
+“Susan, Susan!”
+
+Her heart melted within her, but it seemed like treachery to her poor
+boy, like faithlessness to her dead mother, to turn to her lover while
+the tears which he had caused to flow were yet unwiped on Will’s
+cheeks. So she seemed to take no heed, but passed into the darkness,
+and, guided by the sobs, she found her way to where Willie sat crouched
+among the disused tubs and churns.
+
+“Come out wi’ me, lad;” and they went out into the orchard, where the
+fruit-trees were bare of leaves, but ghastly in their tattered covering
+of gray moss: and the soughing November wind came with long sweeps over
+the fells till it rattled among the crackling boughs, underneath which
+the brother and sister sat in the dark; he in her lap, and she hushing
+his head against her shoulder.
+
+“Thou should’st na’ play wi’ fire. It’s a naughty trick. Thoul’t suffer
+for it in worse ways nor this before thou’st done, I’m afeared. I
+should ha’ hit thee twice as lungeous kicks as Mike, if I’d been in his
+place. He did na’ hurt thee, I am sure,” she assumed, half as a
+question.
+
+“Yes but he did. He turned me quite sick.” And he let his head fall
+languidly down on his sister’s breast.
+
+“Come, lad! come, lad!” said she anxiously. “Be a man. It was not much
+that I saw. Why, when first the red cow came she kicked me far harder
+for offering to milk her before her legs were tied. See thee! here’s a
+peppermint-drop, and I’ll make thee a pasty to-night; only don’t give
+way so, for it hurts me sore to think that Michael has done thee any
+harm, my pretty.”
+
+Willie roused himself up, and put back the wet and ruffled hair from
+his heated face; and he and Susan rose up, and hand-in-hand went
+towards the house, walking slowly and quietly except for a kind of sob
+which Willie could not repress. Susan took him to the pump and washed
+his tear-stained face, till she thought she had obliterated all traces
+of the recent disturbance, arranging his curls for him, and then she
+kissed him tenderly, and led him in, hoping to find Michael in the
+kitchen, and make all straight between them. But the blaze had dropped
+down into darkness; the wood was a heap of gray ashes in which the
+sparks ran hither and thither; but even in the groping darkness Susan
+knew by the sinking at her heart that Michael was not there. She threw
+another brand on the hearth and lighted the candle, and sat down to her
+work in silence. Willie cowered on his stool by the side of the fire,
+eyeing his sister from time to time, and sorry and oppressed, he knew
+not why, by the sight of her grave, almost stern face. No one came.
+They two were in the house alone. The old woman who helped Susan with
+the household work had gone out for the night to some friend’s
+dwelling. William Dixon, the father, was up on the fells seeing after
+his sheep. Susan had no heart to prepare the evening meal.
+
+“Susy, darling, are you angry with me?” said Willie, in his little
+piping, gentle voice. He had stolen up to his sister’s side. “I won’t
+never play with the fire again; and I’ll not cry if Michael does kick
+me. Only don’t look so like dead mother—don’t—don’t—please don’t!” he
+exclaimed, hiding his face on her shoulder.
+
+“I’m not angry, Willie,” said she. “Don’t be feared on me. You want
+your supper, and you shall have it; and don’t you be feared on Michael.
+He shall give reason for every hair of your head that he touches—he
+shall.”
+
+When William Dixon came home he found Susan and Willie sitting
+together, hand-in-hand, and apparently pretty cheerful. He bade them go
+to bed, for that he would sit up for Michael; and the next morning,
+when Susan came down, she found that Michael had started an hour before
+with the cart for lime. It was a long day’s work; Susan knew it would
+be late, perhaps later than on the preceding night, before he
+returned—at any rate, past her usual bed-time; and on no account would
+she stop up a minute beyond that hour in the kitchen, whatever she
+might do in her bed-room. Here she sat and watched till past midnight;
+and when she saw him coming up the brow with the carts, she knew full
+well, even in that faint moonlight, that his gait was the gait of a man
+in liquor. But though she was annoyed and mortified to find in what way
+he had chosen to forget her, the fact did not disgust or shock her as
+it would have done many a girl, even at that day, who had not been
+brought up as Susan had, among a class who considered it no crime, but
+rather a mark of spirit, in a man to get drunk occasionally.
+Nevertheless, she chose to hold herself very high all the next day when
+Michael was, perforce, obliged to give up any attempt to do heavy work,
+and hung about the out-buildings and farm in a very disconsolate and
+sickly state. Willie had far more pity on him than Susan. Before
+evening, Willie and he were fast, and, on his side, ostentatious
+friends. Willie rode the horses down to water; Willie helped him to
+chop wood. Susan sat gloomily at her work, hearing an indistinct but
+cheerful conversation going on in the shippon, while the cows were
+being milked. She almost felt irritated with her little brother, as if
+he were a traitor, and had gone over to the enemy in the very battle
+that she was fighting in his cause. She was alone with no one to speak
+to, while they prattled on regardless if she were glad or sorry.
+
+Soon Willie burst in. “Susan! Susan! come with me; I’ve something so
+pretty to show you. Round the corner of the barn—run! run!” (He was
+dragging her along, half reluctant, half desirous of some change in
+that weary day.) Round the corner of the barn; and caught hold of by
+Michael, who stood there awaiting her.
+
+“O Willie!” cried she “you naughty boy. There is nothing pretty—what
+have you brought me here for? Let me go; I won’t be held.”
+
+“Only one word. Nay, if you wish it so much, you may go,” said Michael,
+suddenly loosing his hold as she struggled. But now she was free, she
+only drew off a step or two, murmuring something about Willie.
+
+“You are going, then?” said Michael, with seeming sadness. “You won’t
+hear me say a word of what is in my heart.”
+
+“How can I tell whether it is what I should like to hear?” replied she,
+still drawing back.
+
+“That is just what I want you to tell me; I want you to hear it and
+then to tell me whether you like it or not.”
+
+“Well, you may speak,” replied she, turning her back, and beginning to
+plait the hem of her apron.
+
+He came close to her ear.
+
+“I’m sorry I hurt Willie the other night. He has forgiven me. Can you?”
+
+“You hurt him very badly,” she replied. “But you are right to be sorry.
+I forgive you.”
+
+“Stop, stop!” said he, laying his hand upon her arm. “There is
+something more I’ve got to say. I want you to be my—what is it they
+call it, Susan?”
+
+“I don’t know,” said she, half-laughing, but trying to get away with
+all her might now; and she was a strong girl, but she could not manage
+it.
+
+“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 one of 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 June 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.
+
+“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 be 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.
+
+Once this fit of violence lasted longer than usual. Susan’s strength
+both of mind and body was nearly worn out; she wrestled in prayer that
+somehow it might end before she, too, was driven mad; or, worse, might
+be obliged to give up life’s aim, and consign Willie to a madhouse.
+From that moment of prayer (as she afterwards superstitiously thought)
+Willie calmed—and then he drooped—and then he sank—and, last of all, he
+died in reality from physical exhaustion.
+
+But he was so gentle and tender as he lay on his dying bed; such
+strange, child-like gleams of returning intelligence came over his
+face, long after the power to make his dull, inarticulate sounds had
+departed, that Susan was attracted to him by a stronger tie than she
+had ever felt before. It was something to have even an idiot loving her
+with dumb, wistful, animal affection; something to have any creature
+looking at her with such beseeching eyes, imploring protection from the
+insidious enemy stealing on. And yet she knew that to him death was no
+enemy, but a true friend, restoring light and health to his poor
+clouded mind. It was to her that death was an enemy; to her, the
+survivor, when Willie died; there was no one to love her.
+
+Worse doom still, there was no one left on earth for her to love.
+
+You now know why no wandering tourist could persuade her to receive him
+as a lodger; why no tired traveller could melt her heart to afford him
+rest and refreshment; why long habits of seclusion had given her a
+moroseness of manner, and how care for the interests of another had
+rendered her keen and miserly.
+
+But there was a third act in the drama of her life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+In spite of Peggy’s prophecy that Susan’s life should not seem long, it
+did seem wearisome and endless, as the years slowly uncoiled their
+monotonous circles. To be sure, she might have made change for herself,
+but she did not care to do it. It was, indeed, more than “not caring,”
+which merely implies a certain degree of _vis inertiæ_ to be subdued
+before an object can be attained, and that the object itself does not
+seem to be of sufficient importance to call out the requisite energy.
+On the contrary, Susan exerted herself to avoid change and variety. She
+had a morbid dread of new faces, which originated in her desire to keep
+poor dead Willie’s state a profound secret. She had a contempt for new
+customs; and, indeed, her old ways prospered so well under her active
+hand and vigilant eye, that it was difficult to know how they could be
+improved upon. She was regularly present in Coniston market with the
+best butter and the earliest chickens of the season. Those were the
+common farm produce that every farmer’s wife about had to sell; but
+Susan, after she had disposed of the more feminine articles, turned to
+on the man’s side. A better judge of a horse or cow there was not in
+all the country round. Yorkshire itself might have attempted to jockey
+her, and would have failed. Her corn was sound and clean; her potatoes
+well preserved to the latest spring. People began to talk of the hoards
+of money Susan Dixon must have laid up somewhere; and one young
+ne’er-do-weel of a farmer’s son undertook to make love to the woman of
+forty, who looked fifty-five, if a day. He made up to her by opening a
+gate on the road-path home, as she was riding on a bare-backed horse,
+her purchase not an hour ago. She was off before him, refusing his
+civility; but the remounting was not so easy, and rather than fail she
+did not choose to attempt it. She walked, and he walked alongside,
+improving his opportunity, which, as he vainly thought, had been
+consciously granted to him. As they drew near Yew Nook, he ventured on
+some expression of a wish to keep company with her. His words were
+vague and clumsily arranged. Susan turned round and coolly asked him to
+explain himself, he took courage, as he thought of her reputed wealth,
+and expressed his wishes this second time pretty plainly. To his
+surprise, the reply she made was in a series of smart strokes across
+his shoulders, administered through the medium of a supple
+hazel-switch.
+
+“Take that!” said she, almost breathless, “to teach thee how thou
+darest make a fool of an honest woman old enough to be thy mother. If
+thou com’st a step nearer the house, there’s a good horse-pool, and
+there’s two stout fellows who’ll like no better fun than ducking thee.
+Be off wi’ thee!”
+
+And she strode into her own premises, never looking round to see
+whether he obeyed her injunction or not.
+
+Sometimes three or four years would pass over without her hearing
+Michael Hurst’s name mentioned. She used to wonder at such times
+whether he were dead or alive. She would sit for hours by the dying
+embers of her fire on a winter’s evening, trying to recall the scenes
+of her youth; trying to bring up living pictures of the faces she had
+then known—Michael’s most especially. She thought it was possible, so
+long had been the lapse of years, that she might now pass by him in the
+street unknowing and unknown. His outward form she might not recognize,
+but himself she should feel in the thrill of her whole being. He could
+not pass her unawares.
+
+What little she did hear about him, all testified a downward tendency.
+He drank—not at stated times when there was no other work to be done,
+but continually, whether it was seed-time or harvest. His children were
+all ill at the same time; then one died, while the others recovered,
+but were poor sickly things. No one dared to give Susan any direct
+intelligence of her former lover; many avoided all mention of his name
+in her presence; but a few spoke out either in indifference to, or
+ignorance of, those bygone days. Susan heard every word, every whisper,
+every sound that related to him. But her eye never changed, nor did a
+muscle of her face move.
+
+Late one November night she sat over her fire; not a human being
+besides herself in the house; none but she had ever slept there since
+Willie’s death. The farm-labourers had foddered the cattle and gone
+home hours before. There were crickets chirping all round the warm
+hearth-stones; there was the clock ticking with the peculiar beat Susan
+had known from her childhood, and which then and ever since she had
+oddly associated within the idea of a mother and child talking
+together, one loud tick, and quick—a feeble, sharp one following.
+
+The day had been keen, and piercingly cold. The whole lift of heaven
+seemed a dome of iron. Black and frost-bound was the earth under the
+cruel east wind. Now the wind had dropped, and as the darkness had
+gathered in, the weather-wise old labourers prophesied snow. The sounds
+in the air arose again, as Susan sat still and silent. They were of a
+different character to what they had been during the prevalence of the
+east wind. Then they had been shrill and piping; now they were like low
+distant growling; not unmusical, but strangely threatening. Susan went
+to the window, and drew aside the little curtain. The whole world was
+white—the air was blinded with the swift and heavy fall of snow. At
+present it came down straight, but Susan knew those distant sounds in
+the hollows and gulleys of the hills portended a driving wind and a
+more cruel storm. She thought of her sheep; were they all folded? the
+new-born calf, was it bedded well? Before the drifts were formed too
+deep for her to pass in and out—and by the morning she judged that they
+would be six or seven feet deep—she would go out and see after the
+comfort of her beasts. She took a lantern, and tied a shawl over her
+head, and went out into the open air. She had tenderly provided for all
+her animals, and was returning, when, borne on the blast as if some
+spirit-cry—for it seemed to come rather down from the skies than from
+any creature standing on earth’s level—she heard a voice of agony; she
+could not distinguish words; it seemed rather as if some bird of prey
+was being caught in the whirl of the icy wind, and torn and tortured by
+its violence. Again up high above! Susan put down her lantern, and
+shouted loud in return; it was an instinct, for if the creature were
+not human, which she had doubted but a moment before, what good could
+her responding cry do? And her cry was seized on by the tyrannous wind,
+and borne farther away in the opposite direction to that from which the
+call of agony had proceeded. Again she listened; no sound: then again
+it rang through space; and this time she was sure it was human. She
+turned into the house, and heaped turf and wood on the fire, which,
+careless of her own sensations, she had allowed to fade and almost die
+out. She put a new candle in her lantern; she changed her shawl for a
+maud, and leaving the door on latch, she sallied out. Just at the
+moment when her ear first encountered the weird noises of the storm, on
+issuing forth into the open air, she thought she heard the words, “O
+God! O help!” They were a guide to her, if words they were, for they
+came straight from a rock not a quarter of a mile from Yew Nook, but
+only to be reached, on account of its precipitous character, by a
+round-about path. Thither she steered, defying wind and snow; guided by
+here a thorn-tree, there an old, doddered oak, which had not quite lest
+their identity under the whelming mask of snow. Now and then she
+stopped to listen; but never a word or sound heard she, till right from
+where the copse-wood grew thick and tangled at the base of the rock,
+round which she was winding, she heard a moan. Into the brake—all snow
+in appearance—almost a plain of snow looked on from the little eminence
+where she stood—she plunged, breaking down the bush, stumbling,
+bruising herself, fighting her way; her lantern held between her teeth,
+and she herself using head as well as hands to butt away a passage, at
+whatever cost of bodily injury. As she climbed or staggered, owing to
+the unevenness of the snow-covered ground, where the briars and weeds
+of years were tangled and matted together, her foot felt something
+strangely soft and yielding. She lowered her lantern; there lay a man,
+prone on his face, nearly covered by the fast-falling flakes; he must
+have fallen from the rock above, as, not knowing of the circuitous
+path, he had tried to descend its steep, slippery face. Who could tell?
+it was no time for thinking. Susan lifted him up with her wiry
+strength; he gave no help—no sign of life; but for all that he might be
+alive: he was still warm; she tied her maud round him; she fastened the
+lantern to her apron-string; she held him tight: half-carrying,
+half-dragging—what did a few bruises signify to him, compared to dear
+life, to precious life! She got him through the brake, and down the
+path. There, for an instant, she stopped to take breath; but, as if
+stung by the Furies, she pushed on again with almost superhuman
+strength. Clasping him round the waist, and leaning his dead weight
+against the lintel of the door, she tried to undo the latch; but now,
+just at this moment, a trembling faintness came over her, and a fearful
+dread took possession of her—that here, on the very threshold of her
+home, she might be found dead, and buried under the snow, when the
+farm-servants came in the morning. This terror stirred her up to one
+more effort. Then she and her companion were in the warmth of the quiet
+haven of that kitchen; she laid him on the settle, and sank on the
+floor by his side. How long she remained in this swoon she could not
+tell; not very long she judged by the fire, which was still red and
+sullenly glowing when she came to herself. She lighted the candle, and
+bent over her late burden to ascertain if indeed he were dead. She
+stood long gazing. The man lay dead. There could be no doubt about it.
+His filmy eyes glared at her, unshut. But Susan was not one to be
+affrighted by the stony aspect of death. It was not that; it was the
+bitter, woeful recognition of Michael Hurst!
+
+She was convinced he was dead; but after a while she refused to believe
+in her conviction. She stripped off his wet outer-garments with
+trembling, hurried hands. She brought a blanket down from her own bed;
+she made up the fire. She swathed him in fresh, warm wrappings, and
+laid him on the flags before the fire, sitting herself at his head, and
+holding it in her lap, while she tenderly wiped his loose, wet hair,
+curly still, although its colour had changed from nut-brown to
+iron-gray since she had seen it last. From time to time she bent over
+the face afresh, sick, and fain to believe that the flicker of the
+fire-light was some slight convulsive motion. But the dim, staring eyes
+struck chill to her heart. At last she ceased her delicate, busy cares:
+but she still held the head softly, as if caressing it. She thought
+over all the possibilities and chances in the mingled yarn of their
+lives that might, by so slight a turn, have ended far otherwise. If her
+mother’s cold had been early tended, so that the responsibility as to
+her brother’s weal or woe had not fallen upon her; if the fever had not
+taken such rough, cruel hold on Will; nay, if Mrs. Gale, that hard,
+worldly sister, had not accompanied him on his last visit to Yew
+Nook—his very last before this fatal, stormy might; if she had heard
+his cry,—cry uttered by these pale, dead lips with such wild,
+despairing agony, not yet three hours ago!—O! if she had but heard it
+sooner, he might have been saved before that blind, false step had
+precipitated him down the rock! In going over this weary chain of
+unrealized possibilities, Susan learnt the force of Peggy’s words. Life
+was short, looking back upon it. It seemed but yesterday since all the
+love of her being had been poured out, and run to waste. The
+intervening years—the long monotonous years that had turned her into an
+old woman before her time—were but a dream.
+
+The labourers coming in the dawn of the winter’s day were surprised to
+see the fire-light through the low kitchen-window. They knocked, and
+hearing a moaning answer, they entered, fearing that something had
+befallen their mistress. For all explanation they got these words
+
+“It is Michael Hurst. He was belated, and fell down the Raven’s Crag.
+Where does Eleanor, his wife, live?”
+
+How Michael Hurst got to Yew Nook no one but Susan ever knew. They
+thought he had dragged himself there, with some sore internal bruise
+sapping away his minuted life. They could not have believed the
+superhuman exertion which had first sought him out, and then dragged
+him hither. Only Susan knew of that.
+
+She gave him into the charge of her servants, and went out and saddled
+her horse. Where the wind had drifted the snow on one side, and the
+road was clear and bare, she rode, and rode fast; where the soft,
+deceitful heaps were massed up, she dismounted and led her steed,
+plunging in deep, with fierce energy, the pain at her heart urging her
+onwards with a sharp, digging spur.
+
+The gray, solemn, winter’s noon was more night-like than the depth of
+summer’s night; dim-purple brooded the low skies over the white earth,
+as Susan rode up to what had been Michael Hurst’s abode while living.
+It was a small farm-house carelessly kept outside, slatternly tended
+within. The pretty Nelly Hebthwaite was pretty still; her delicate face
+had never suffered from any long-enduring feeling. If anything, its
+expression was that of plaintive sorrow; but the soft, light hair had
+scarcely a tinge of gray; the wood-rose tint of complexion yet
+remained, if not so brilliant as in youth; the straight nose, the small
+mouth were untouched by time. Susan felt the contrast even at that
+moment. She knew that her own skin was weather-beaten, furrowed,
+brown,—that her teeth were gone, and her hair gray and ragged. And yet
+she was not two years older than Nelly,—she had not been, in youth,
+when she took account of these things. Nelly stood wondering at the
+strange-enough horse-woman, who stopped and panted at the door, holding
+her horse’s bridle, and refusing to enter.
+
+“Where is Michael Hurst?” asked Susan, at last.
+
+“Well, I can’t rightly say. He should have been at home last night, but
+he was off, seeing after a public-house to be let at Ulverstone, for
+our farm does not answer, and we were thinking—”
+
+“He did not come home last night?” said Susan, cutting short the story,
+and half-affirming, half-questioning, by way of letting in a ray of the
+awful light before she let it full in, in its consuming wrath.
+
+“No! he’ll be stopping somewhere out Ulverstone ways. I’m sure we’ve
+need of him at home, for I’ve no one but lile Tommy to help me tend the
+beasts. Things have not gone well with us, and we don’t keep a servant
+now. But you’re trembling all over, ma’am. You’d better come in, and
+take something warm, while your horse rests. That’s the stable-door, to
+your left.”
+
+Susan took her horse there; loosened his girths, and rubbed him down
+with a wisp of straw. Then she hooked about her for hay; but the place
+was bare of feed, and smelt damp and unused. She went to the house,
+thankful for the respite, and got some clap-bread, which she mashed up
+in a pailful of lukewarm water. Every moment was a respite, and yet
+every moment made her dread the more the task that lay before her. It
+would be longer than she thought at first. She took the saddle off, and
+hung about her horse, which seemed, somehow, more like a friend than
+anything else in the world. She laid her cheek against its neck, and
+rested there, before returning to the house for the last time.
+
+Eleanor had brought down one of her own gowns, which hung on a chair
+against the fire, and had made her unknown visitor a cup of hot tea.
+Susan could hardly bear all these little attentions: they choked her,
+and yet she was so wet, so weak with fatigue and excitement, that she
+could neither resist by voice or by action. Two children stood
+awkwardly about, puzzled at the scene, and even Eleanor began to wish
+for some explanation of who her strange visitor was.
+
+“You’ve, maybe, heard him speaking of me? I’m called Susan Dixon.”
+
+Nelly coloured, and avoided meeting Susan’s eye.
+
+“I’ve heard other folk speak of you. He never named your name.”
+
+This respect of silence came like balm to Susan: balm not felt or
+heeded at the time it was applied, but very grateful in its effects for
+all that.
+
+“He is at my house,” continued Susan, determined not to stop or quaver
+in the operation—the pain which must be inflicted.
+
+“At your house? Yew Nook?” questioned Eleanor, surprised. “How came he
+there?”—half jealously. “Did he take shelter from the coming storm?
+Tell me,—there is something—tell me, woman!”
+
+“He took no shelter. Would to God he had!”
+
+“O! would to God! would to God!” shrieked out Eleanor, learning all
+from the woful import of those dreary eyes. Her cries thrilled through
+the house; the children’s piping wailings and passionate cries on
+“Daddy! Daddy!” pierced into Susan’s very marrow. But she remained as
+still and tearless as the great round face upon the clock.
+
+At last, in a lull of crying, she said,—not exactly questioning, but as
+if partly to herself—
+
+“You loved him, then?”
+
+“Loved him! he was my husband! He was the father of three bonny bairns
+that lie dead in Grasmere churchyard. I wish you’d go, Susan Dixon, and
+let me weep without your watching me! I wish you’d never come near the
+place.”
+
+“Alas! alas! it would not have brought him to life. I would have laid
+down my own to save his. My life has been so very sad! No one would
+have cared if I had died. Alas! alas!”
+
+The tone in which she said this was so utterly mournful and despairing
+that it awed Nelly into quiet for a time. But by-and-by she said, “I
+would not turn a dog out to do it harm; but the night is clear, and
+Tommy shall guide you to the Red Cow. But, oh, I want to be alone! If
+you’ll come back to-morrow, I’ll be better, and I’ll hear all, and
+thank you for every kindness you have shown him,—and I do believe
+you’ve showed him kindness,—though I don’t know why.”
+
+Susan moved heavily and strangely.
+
+She said something—her words came thick and unintelligible. She had had
+a paralytic stroke since she had last spoken. She could not go, even if
+she would. Nor did Eleanor, when she became aware of the state of the
+case, wish her to leave. She had her laid on her own bed, and weeping
+silently all the while for her last husband, she nursed Susan like a
+sister. She did not know what her guest’s worldly position might be;
+and she might never be repaid. But she sold many a little trifle to
+purchase such small comforts as Susan needed. Susan, lying still and
+motionless, learnt much. It was not a severe stroke; it might be the
+forerunner of others yet to come, but at some distance of time. But for
+the present she recovered, and regained much of her former health. On
+her sick-bed she matured her plans. When she returned to Yew Nook, she
+took Michael Hurst’s widow and children with her to live there, and
+fill up the haunted hearth with living forms that should banish the
+ghosts.
+
+And so it fell out that the latter days of Susan Dixon’s life were
+better than the former.
+
+
+
+
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+<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold;'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Half a Life-time Ago, by Elizabeth Gaskell</div>
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+</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Half a Life-time Ago</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Elizabeth Gaskell</div>
+<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Release Date: April 21, 2000 [eBook #2547]<br />
+[Most recently updated: April 20, 2021]</div>
+<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
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+<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: David Price</div>
+<div style='margin-top:2em;margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HALF A LIFE-TIME AGO ***</div>
+
+<h1>Half a Life-time Ago</h1>
+
+<h2 class="no-break">by Elizabeth Gaskell</h2>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2>Contents</h2>
+
+<table summary="" style="">
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap01">CHAPTER I.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap02">CHAPTER II.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap03">CHAPTER III.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap04">CHAPTER IV.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap05">CHAPTER V.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap01"></a>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+
+<p>
+Half a life-time ago, there lived in one of the Westmoreland dales a single
+woman, of the name of Susan Dixon. She was owner of the small farm-house where
+she resided, and of some thirty or forty acres of land by which it was
+surrounded. She had also an hereditary right to a sheep-walk, extending to the
+wild fells that overhang Blea Tarn. In the language of the country she was a
+Stateswoman. Her house is yet to be seen on the Oxenfell road, between Skelwith
+and Coniston. You go along a moorland track, made by the carts that
+occasionally came for turf from the Oxenfell. A brook babbles and brattles by
+the wayside, giving you a sense of companionship, which relieves the deep
+solitude in which this way is usually traversed. Some miles on this side of
+Coniston there is a farmstead&mdash;a gray stone house, and a square of
+farm-buildings surrounding a green space of rough turf, in the midst of which
+stands a mighty, funereal umbrageous yew, making a solemn shadow, as of death,
+in the very heart and centre of the light and heat of the brightest summer day.
+On the side away from the house, this yard slopes down to a dark-brown pool,
+which is supplied with fresh water from the overflowings of a stone cistern,
+into which some rivulet of the brook before-mentioned continually and
+melodiously falls bubbling. The cattle drink out of this cistern. The household
+bring their pitchers and fill them with drinking-water by a dilatory, yet
+pretty, process. The water-carrier brings with her a leaf of the
+hound&rsquo;s-tongue fern, and, inserting it in the crevice of the gray rock,
+makes a cool, green spout for the sparkling stream.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The house is no specimen, at the present day, of what it was in the lifetime of
+Susan Dixon. Then, every small diamond pane in the windows glittered with
+cleanliness. You might have eaten off the floor; you could see yourself in the
+pewter plates and the polished oaken awmry, or dresser, of the state kitchen
+into which you entered. Few strangers penetrated further than this room. Once
+or twice, wandering tourists, attracted by the lonely picturesqueness of the
+situation, and the exquisite cleanliness of the house itself, made their way
+into this house-place, and offered money enough (as they thought) to tempt the
+hostess to receive them as lodgers. They would give no trouble, they said; they
+would be out rambling or sketching all day long; would be perfectly content
+with a share of the food which she provided for herself; or would procure what
+they required from the Waterhead Inn at Coniston. But no liberal sum&mdash;no
+fair words&mdash;moved her from her stony manner, or her monotonous tone of
+indifferent refusal. No persuasion could induce her to show any more of the
+house than that first room; no appearance of fatigue procured for the weary an
+invitation to sit down and rest; and if one more bold and less delicate did so
+without being asked, Susan stood by, cold and apparently deaf, or only replying
+by the briefest monosyllables, till the unwelcome visitor had departed. Yet
+those with whom she had dealings, in the way of selling her cattle or her farm
+produce, spoke of her as keen after a bargain&mdash;a hard one to have to do
+with; and she never spared herself exertion or fatigue, at market or in the
+field, to make the most of her produce. She led the hay-makers with her swift,
+steady rake, and her noiseless evenness of motion. She was about among the
+earliest in the market, examining samples of oats, pricing them, and then
+turning with grim satisfaction to her own cleaner corn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was served faithfully and long by those who were rather her
+fellow-labourers than her servants. She was even and just in her dealings with
+them. If she was peculiar and silent, they knew her, and knew that she might be
+relied on. Some of them had known her from her childhood; and deep in their
+hearts was an unspoken&mdash;almost unconscious&mdash;pity for her, for they
+knew her story, though they never spoke of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yes; the time had been when that tall, gaunt, hard-featured, angular
+woman&mdash;who never smiled, and hardly ever spoke an unnecessary
+word&mdash;had been a fine-looking girl, bright-spirited and rosy; and when the
+hearth at the Yew Nook had been as bright as she, with family love and youthful
+hope and mirth. Fifty or fifty-one years ago, William Dixon and his wife
+Margaret were alive; and Susan, their daughter, was about eighteen years
+old&mdash;ten years older than the only other child, a boy named after his
+father. William and Margaret Dixon were rather superior people, of a character
+belonging&mdash;as far as I have seen&mdash;exclusively to the class of
+Westmoreland and Cumberland statesmen&mdash;just, independent, upright; not
+given to much speaking; kind-hearted, but not demonstrative; disliking change,
+and new ways, and new people; sensible and shrewd; each household
+self-contained, and its members having little curiosity as to their neighbours,
+with whom they rarely met for any social intercourse, save at the stated times
+of sheep-shearing and Christmas; having a certain kind of sober pleasure in
+amassing money, which occasionally made them miserable (as they call miserly
+people up in the north) in their old age; reading no light or ephemeral
+literature, but the grave, solid books brought round by the pedlars (such as
+the &ldquo;Paradise Lost&rdquo; and &ldquo;Regained,&rsquo;&rdquo; &ldquo;The
+Death of Abel,&rdquo; &ldquo;The Spiritual Quixote,&rdquo; and &ldquo;The
+Pilgrim&rsquo;s Progress&rdquo;), were to be found in nearly every house: the
+men occasionally going off laking, <i>i.e.</i> playing, <i>i.e.</i> drinking
+for days together, and having to be hunted up by anxious wives, who dared not
+leave their husbands to the chances of the wild precipitous roads, but walked
+miles and miles, lantern in hand, in the dead of night, to discover and guide
+the solemnly-drunken husband home; who had a dreadful headache the next day,
+and the day after that came forth as grave, and sober, and virtuous looking as
+if there were no such thing as malt and spirituous liquors in the world; and
+who were seldom reminded of their misdoings by their wives, to whom such
+occasional outbreaks were as things of course, when once the immediate anxiety
+produced by them was over. Such were&mdash;such are&mdash;the characteristics
+of a class now passing away from the face of the land, as their compeers, the
+yeomen, have done before them. Of such was William Dixon. He was a shrewd
+clever farmer, in his day and generation, when shrewdness was rather shown in
+the breeding and rearing of sheep and cattle than in the cultivation of land.
+Owing to this character of his, statesmen from a distance from beyond Kendal,
+or from Borrowdale, of greater wealth than he, would send their sons to be
+farm-servants for a year or two with him, in order to learn some of his methods
+before setting up on land of their own. When Susan, his daughter, was about
+seventeen, one Michael Hurst was farm-servant at Yew Nook. He worked with the
+master, and lived with the family, and was in all respects treated as an equal,
+except in the field. His father was a wealthy statesman at Wythburne, up beyond
+Grasmere; and through Michael&rsquo;s servitude the families had become
+acquainted, and the Dixons went over to the High Beck sheep-shearing, and the
+Hursts came down by Red Bank and Loughrig Tarn and across the Oxenfell when
+there was the Christmas-tide feasting at Yew Nook. The fathers strolled round
+the fields together, examined cattle and sheep, and looked knowing over each
+other&rsquo;s horses. The mothers inspected the dairies and household
+arrangements, each openly admiring the plans of the other, but secretly
+preferring their own. Both fathers and mothers cast a glance from time to time
+at Michael and Susan, who were thinking of nothing less than farm or dairy, but
+whose unspoken attachment was, in all ways, so suitable and natural a thing
+that each parent rejoiced over it, although with characteristic reserve it was
+never spoken about&mdash;not even between husband and wife.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Susan had been a strong, independent, healthy girl; a clever help to her
+mother, and a spirited companion to her father; more of a man in her (as he
+often said) than her delicate little brother ever would have. He was his
+mother&rsquo;s darling, although she loved Susan well. There was no positive
+engagement between Michael and Susan&mdash;I doubt whether even plain words of
+love had been spoken; when one winter-time Margaret Dixon was seized with
+inflammation consequent upon a neglected cold. She had always been strong and
+notable, and had been too busy to attend to the early symptoms of illness. It
+would go off, she said to the woman who helped in the kitchen; or if she did
+not feel better when they had got the hams and bacon out of hand, she would
+take some herb-tea and nurse up a bit. But Death could not wait till the hams
+and bacon were cured: he came on with rapid strides, and shooting arrows of
+portentous agony. Susan had never seen illness&mdash;never knew how much she
+loved her mother till now, when she felt a dreadful, instinctive certainty that
+she was losing her. Her mind was thronged with recollections of the many times
+she had slighted her mother&rsquo;s wishes; her heart was full of the echoes of
+careless and angry replies that she had spoken. What would she not now give to
+have opportunities of service and obedience, and trials of her patience and
+love, for that dear mother who lay gasping in torture! And yet Susan had been a
+good girl and an affectionate daughter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sharp pain went off, and delicious ease came on; yet still her mother sunk.
+In the midst of this languid peace she was dying. She motioned Susan to her
+bedside, for she could only whisper; and then, while the father was out of the
+room, she spoke as much to the eager, hungering eyes of her daughter by the
+motion of her lips, as by the slow, feeble sounds of her voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Susan, lass, thou must not fret. It is God&rsquo;s will, and thou wilt
+have a deal to do. Keep father straight if thou canst; and if he goes out
+Ulverstone ways, see that thou meet him before he gets to the Old Quarry.
+It&rsquo;s a dree bit for a man who has had a drop. As for lile
+Will&rdquo;&mdash;Here the poor woman&rsquo;s face began to work and her
+fingers to move nervously as they lay on the bed-quilt&mdash;&ldquo;lile Will
+will miss me most of all. Father&rsquo;s often vexed with him because
+he&rsquo;s not a quick strong lad; he is not, my poor lile chap. And father
+thinks he&rsquo;s saucy, because he cannot always stomach oat-cake and
+porridge. There&rsquo;s better than three pound in th&rsquo; old black tea-pot
+on the top shelf of the cupboard. Just keep a piece of loaf-bread by you, Susan
+dear, for Will to come to when he&rsquo;s not taken his breakfast. I have, may
+be, spoilt him; but there&rsquo;ll be no one to spoil him now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She began to cry a low, feeble cry, and covered up her face that Susan might
+not see her. That dear face! those precious moments while yet the eyes could
+look out with love and intelligence. Susan laid her head down close by her
+mother&rsquo;s ear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mother I&rsquo;ll take tent of Will. Mother, do you hear? He shall not
+want ought I can give or get for him, least of all the kind words which you had
+ever ready for us both. Bless you! bless you! my own mother.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thou&rsquo;lt promise me that, Susan, wilt thou? I can die easy if
+thou&rsquo;lt take charge of him. But he&rsquo;s hardly like other folk; he
+tries father at times, though I think father&rsquo;ll be tender of him when
+I&rsquo;m gone, for my sake. And, Susan, there&rsquo;s one thing more. I never
+spoke on it for fear of the bairn being called a tell-tale, but I just
+comforted him up. He vexes Michael at times, and Michael has struck him before
+now. I did not want to make a stir; but he&rsquo;s not strong, and a word from
+thee, Susan, will go a long way with Michael.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Susan was as red now as she had been pale before; it was the first time that
+her influence over Michael had been openly acknowledged by a third person, and
+a flash of joy came athwart the solemn sadness of the moment. Her mother had
+spoken too much, and now came on the miserable faintness. She never spoke again
+coherently; but when her children and her husband stood by her bedside, she
+took lile Will&rsquo;s hand and put it into Susan&rsquo;s, and looked at her
+with imploring eyes. Susan clasped her arms round Will, and leaned her head
+upon his little curly one, and vowed within herself to be as a mother to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Henceforward she was all in all to her brother. She was a more spirited and
+amusing companion to him than his mother had been, from her greater activity,
+and perhaps, also, from her originality of character, which often prompted her
+to perform her habitual actions in some new and racy manner. She was tender to
+lile Will when she was prompt and sharp with everybody else&mdash;with Michael
+most of all; for somehow the girl felt that, unprotected by her mother, she
+must keep up her own dignity, and not allow her lover to see how strong a hold
+he had upon her heart. He called her hard and cruel, and left her so; and she
+smiled softly to herself, when his back was turned, to think how little he
+guessed how deeply he was loved. For Susan was merely comely and fine looking;
+Michael was strikingly handsome, admired by all the girls for miles round, and
+quite enough of a country coxcomb to know it and plume himself accordingly. He
+was the second son of his father; the eldest would have High Beck farm, of
+course, but there was a good penny in the Kendal bank in store for Michael.
+When harvest was over, he went to Chapel Langdale to learn to dance; and at
+night, in his merry moods, he would do his steps on the flag floor of the Yew
+Nook kitchen, to the secret admiration of Susan, who had never learned dancing,
+but who flouted him perpetually, even while she admired, in accordance with the
+rule she seemed to have made for herself about keeping him at a distance so
+long as he lived under the same roof with her. One evening he sulked at some
+saucy remark of hers; he sitting in the chimney corner with his arms on his
+knees, and his head bent forwards, lazily gazing into the wood-fire on the
+hearth, and luxuriating in rest after a hard day&rsquo;s labour; she sitting
+among the geraniums on the long, low window-seat, trying to catch the last
+slanting rays of the autumnal light to enable her to finish stitching a
+shirt-collar for Will, who lounged full length on the flags at the other side
+of the hearth to Michael, poking the burning wood from time to time with a long
+hazel-stick to bring out the leap of glittering sparks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And if you can dance a threesome reel, what good does it do ye?&rdquo;
+asked Susan, looking askance at Michael, who had just been vaunting his
+proficiency. &ldquo;Does it help you plough, reap, or even climb the rocks to
+take a raven&rsquo;s nest? If I were a man, I&rsquo;d be ashamed to give in to
+such softness.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you were a man, you&rsquo;d be glad to do anything which made the
+pretty girls stand round and admire.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;As they do to you, eh! Ho, Michael, that would not be my way o&rsquo;
+being a man!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What would then?&rdquo; asked he, after a pause, during which he had
+expected in vain that she would go on with her sentence. No answer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I should not like you as a man, Susy; you&rsquo;d be too hard and
+headstrong.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Am I hard and headstrong?&rdquo; asked she, with as indifferent a tone
+as she could assume, but which yet had a touch of pique in it. His quick ear
+detected the inflexion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, Susy! You&rsquo;re wilful at times, and that&rsquo;s right enough. I
+don&rsquo;t like a girl without spirit. There&rsquo;s a mighty pretty girl
+comes to the dancing class; but she is all milk and water. Her eyes never flash
+like yours when you&rsquo;re put out; why, I can see them flame across the
+kitchen like a cat&rsquo;s in the dark. Now, if you were a man, I should feel
+queer before those looks of yours; as it is, I rather like them,
+because&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because what?&rdquo; asked she, looking up and perceiving that he had
+stolen close up to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because I can make all right in this way,&rdquo; said he, kissing her
+suddenly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Can you?&rdquo; said she, wrenching herself out of his grasp and
+panting, half with rage. &ldquo;Take that, by way of proof that making right is
+none so easy.&rdquo; And she boxed his ears pretty sharply. He went back to his
+seat discomfited and out of temper. She could no longer see to look, even if
+her face had not burnt and her eyes dazzled, but she did not choose to move her
+seat, so she still preserved her stooping attitude and pretended to go on
+sewing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eleanor Hebthwaite may be milk-and-water,&rdquo; muttered he,
+&ldquo;but&mdash;Confound thee, lad! what art thou doing?&rdquo; exclaimed
+Michael, as a great piece of burning wood was cast into his face by an unlucky
+poke of Will&rsquo;s. &ldquo;Thou great lounging, clumsy chap, I&rsquo;ll teach
+thee better!&rdquo; and with one or two good round kicks he sent the lad
+whimpering away into the back-kitchen. When he had a little recovered himself
+from his passion, he saw Susan standing before him, her face looking strange
+and almost ghastly by the reversed position of the shadows, arising from the
+firelight shining upwards right under it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I tell thee what, Michael,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;that lad&rsquo;s
+motherless, but not friendless.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;His own father leathers him, and why should not I, when he&rsquo;s given
+me such a burn on my face?&rdquo; said Michael, putting up his hand to his
+cheek as if in pain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;His father&rsquo;s his father, and there is nought more to be said. But
+if he did burn thee, it was by accident, and not o&rsquo; purpose; as thou
+kicked him, it&rsquo;s a mercy if his ribs are not broken.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He howls loud enough, I&rsquo;m sure. I might ha&rsquo; kicked many a
+lad twice as hard, and they&rsquo;d ne&rsquo;er ha&rsquo; said ought but
+&lsquo;damn ye;&rsquo; but yon lad must needs cry out like a stuck pig if one
+touches him;&rdquo; replied Michael, sullenly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Susan went back to the window-seat, and looked absently out of the window at
+the drifting clouds for a minute or two, while her eyes filled with tears. Then
+she got up and made for the outer door which led into the back-kitchen. Before
+she reached it, however, she heard a low voice, whose music made her thrill,
+say&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Susan, Susan!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her heart melted within her, but it seemed like treachery to her poor boy, like
+faithlessness to her dead mother, to turn to her lover while the tears which he
+had caused to flow were yet unwiped on Will&rsquo;s cheeks. So she seemed to
+take no heed, but passed into the darkness, and, guided by the sobs, she found
+her way to where Willie sat crouched among the disused tubs and churns.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come out wi&rsquo; me, lad;&rdquo; and they went out into the orchard,
+where the fruit-trees were bare of leaves, but ghastly in their tattered
+covering of gray moss: and the soughing November wind came with long sweeps
+over the fells till it rattled among the crackling boughs, underneath which the
+brother and sister sat in the dark; he in her lap, and she hushing his head
+against her shoulder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thou should&rsquo;st na&rsquo; play wi&rsquo; fire. It&rsquo;s a naughty
+trick. Thoul&rsquo;t suffer for it in worse ways nor this before thou&rsquo;st
+done, I&rsquo;m afeared. I should ha&rsquo; hit thee twice as lungeous kicks as
+Mike, if I&rsquo;d been in his place. He did na&rsquo; hurt thee, I am
+sure,&rdquo; she assumed, half as a question.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes but he did. He turned me quite sick.&rdquo; And he let his head fall
+languidly down on his sister&rsquo;s breast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come, lad! come, lad!&rdquo; said she anxiously. &ldquo;Be a man. It was
+not much that I saw. Why, when first the red cow came she kicked me far harder
+for offering to milk her before her legs were tied. See thee! here&rsquo;s a
+peppermint-drop, and I&rsquo;ll make thee a pasty to-night; only don&rsquo;t
+give way so, for it hurts me sore to think that Michael has done thee any harm,
+my pretty.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Willie roused himself up, and put back the wet and ruffled hair from his heated
+face; and he and Susan rose up, and hand-in-hand went towards the house,
+walking slowly and quietly except for a kind of sob which Willie could not
+repress. Susan took him to the pump and washed his tear-stained face, till she
+thought she had obliterated all traces of the recent disturbance, arranging his
+curls for him, and then she kissed him tenderly, and led him in, hoping to find
+Michael in the kitchen, and make all straight between them. But the blaze had
+dropped down into darkness; the wood was a heap of gray ashes in which the
+sparks ran hither and thither; but even in the groping darkness Susan knew by
+the sinking at her heart that Michael was not there. She threw another brand on
+the hearth and lighted the candle, and sat down to her work in silence. Willie
+cowered on his stool by the side of the fire, eyeing his sister from time to
+time, and sorry and oppressed, he knew not why, by the sight of her grave,
+almost stern face. No one came. They two were in the house alone. The old woman
+who helped Susan with the household work had gone out for the night to some
+friend&rsquo;s dwelling. William Dixon, the father, was up on the fells seeing
+after his sheep. Susan had no heart to prepare the evening meal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Susy, darling, are you angry with me?&rdquo; said Willie, in his little
+piping, gentle voice. He had stolen up to his sister&rsquo;s side. &ldquo;I
+won&rsquo;t never play with the fire again; and I&rsquo;ll not cry if Michael
+does kick me. Only don&rsquo;t look so like dead
+mother&mdash;don&rsquo;t&mdash;don&rsquo;t&mdash;please don&rsquo;t!&rdquo; he
+exclaimed, hiding his face on her shoulder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not angry, Willie,&rdquo; said she. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be
+feared on me. You want your supper, and you shall have it; and don&rsquo;t you
+be feared on Michael. He shall give reason for every hair of your head that he
+touches&mdash;he shall.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When William Dixon came home he found Susan and Willie sitting together,
+hand-in-hand, and apparently pretty cheerful. He bade them go to bed, for that
+he would sit up for Michael; and the next morning, when Susan came down, she
+found that Michael had started an hour before with the cart for lime. It was a
+long day&rsquo;s work; Susan knew it would be late, perhaps later than on the
+preceding night, before he returned&mdash;at any rate, past her usual bed-time;
+and on no account would she stop up a minute beyond that hour in the kitchen,
+whatever she might do in her bed-room. Here she sat and watched till past
+midnight; and when she saw him coming up the brow with the carts, she knew full
+well, even in that faint moonlight, that his gait was the gait of a man in
+liquor. But though she was annoyed and mortified to find in what way he had
+chosen to forget her, the fact did not disgust or shock her as it would have
+done many a girl, even at that day, who had not been brought up as Susan had,
+among a class who considered it no crime, but rather a mark of spirit, in a man
+to get drunk occasionally. Nevertheless, she chose to hold herself very high
+all the next day when Michael was, perforce, obliged to give up any attempt to
+do heavy work, and hung about the out-buildings and farm in a very disconsolate
+and sickly state. Willie had far more pity on him than Susan. Before evening,
+Willie and he were fast, and, on his side, ostentatious friends. Willie rode
+the horses down to water; Willie helped him to chop wood. Susan sat gloomily at
+her work, hearing an indistinct but cheerful conversation going on in the
+shippon, while the cows were being milked. She almost felt irritated with her
+little brother, as if he were a traitor, and had gone over to the enemy in the
+very battle that she was fighting in his cause. She was alone with no one to
+speak to, while they prattled on regardless if she were glad or sorry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Soon Willie burst in. &ldquo;Susan! Susan! come with me; I&rsquo;ve something
+so pretty to show you. Round the corner of the barn&mdash;run! run!&rdquo; (He
+was dragging her along, half reluctant, half desirous of some change in that
+weary day.) Round the corner of the barn; and caught hold of by Michael, who
+stood there awaiting her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;O Willie!&rdquo; cried she &ldquo;you naughty boy. There is nothing
+pretty&mdash;what have you brought me here for? Let me go; I won&rsquo;t be
+held.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Only one word. Nay, if you wish it so much, you may go,&rdquo; said
+Michael, suddenly loosing his hold as she struggled. But now she was free, she
+only drew off a step or two, murmuring something about Willie.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are going, then?&rdquo; said Michael, with seeming sadness.
+&ldquo;You won&rsquo;t hear me say a word of what is in my heart.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How can I tell whether it is what I should like to hear?&rdquo; replied
+she, still drawing back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is just what I want you to tell me; I want you to hear it and then
+to tell me whether you like it or not.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, you may speak,&rdquo; replied she, turning her back, and beginning
+to plait the hem of her apron.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He came close to her ear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry I hurt Willie the other night. He has forgiven me. Can
+you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You hurt him very badly,&rdquo; she replied. &ldquo;But you are right to
+be sorry. I forgive you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Stop, stop!&rdquo; said he, laying his hand upon her arm. &ldquo;There
+is something more I&rsquo;ve got to say. I want you to be my&mdash;what is it
+they call it, Susan?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; said she, half-laughing, but trying to get
+away with all her might now; and she was a strong girl, but she could not
+manage it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You do. My&mdash;what is it I want you to be?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I tell you I don&rsquo;t know, and you had best be quiet, and just let
+me go in, or I shall think you&rsquo;re as bad now as you were last
+night.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She did not speak for some time. Then she only said &ldquo;Ask father.&rdquo;
+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&rsquo;s face where he stood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The &ldquo;Ask father&rdquo; 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s presence or
+absence&mdash;they only knew they were together as betrothed husband and wife.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s, as one by one his future father-in-law set aside
+a beast or a pig for Susan&rsquo;s portion, which were not always the best
+animals of their kind upon the farm. But he also complained of his own
+father&rsquo;s stinginess, which somewhat, though not much, alleviated
+Susan&rsquo;s dislike to being awakened out of her pure dream of love to the
+consideration of worldly wealth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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,&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Look at Willie! he might be a cast-off lover and jealous of me, he looks
+so dark and downcast at me.&rdquo; Michael spoke this jest out loud, and Willie
+burst into tears, and ran out of the house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let me go. Let me go!&rdquo; said Susan (for her lover&rsquo;s arm was
+round her waist). &ldquo;I must go to him if he&rsquo;s fretting. I promised
+mother I would!&rdquo; 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What are ye gone for, lad, and me seeking you everywhere?&rdquo; asked
+she, breathless.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I did not know you would seek me. I&rsquo;ve been away many a time, and
+no one has cared to seek me,&rdquo; said he, crying afresh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nonsense,&rdquo; replied Susan, &ldquo;don&rsquo;t be so foolish, ye
+little good-for-nought.&rdquo; 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.
+&ldquo;What for should folk seek after you, when you get away from them
+whenever you can?&rdquo; asked she.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They don&rsquo;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&rsquo;ve taken up with Michael, and you&rsquo;d rather I was away; and
+I can just bide away; but I cannot stand Michael jeering at me. He&rsquo;s got
+you to love him and that might serve him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I love you, too, dearly, lad!&rdquo; said she, putting her arm round
+his neck.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Which one of us do you like best?&rdquo; 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She went very red.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You should not ask such questions. They are not fit for you to ask, nor
+for me to answer.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But mother bade you love me!&rdquo; said he, plaintively.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And so I do. And so I ever will do. Lover nor husband shall come betwixt
+thee and me, lad&mdash;ne&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And thou&rsquo;lt love me always?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Always, and ever. And the more&mdash;the more thou&rsquo;lt love
+Michael,&rdquo; said she, dropping her voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll try,&rdquo; 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.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap02"></a>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;but
+that is neighbouring, according to the acceptation of the word in that
+thinly-populated district,&mdash;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo; 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&rsquo;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&mdash;gone into Yorkshire after horses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her father grew worse; and the doctor insisted on sending over a nurse from
+Coniston. Not a professed nurse&mdash;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,&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;old
+Peggy&rsquo;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&rsquo;s face once more, but was far too weak to turn, so she lay and
+listened.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How is she?&rdquo; whispered one trembling, aged voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Better,&rdquo; replied the other. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s been awake, and had
+a cup of tea. She&rsquo;ll do now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Has she asked after him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hush! No; she has not spoken a word.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Poor lass! poor lass!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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,&mdash;and she had never slept
+again,&mdash;she softly called to the watcher, and asked&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who what?&rdquo; replied the woman, with a conscious affright,
+ill-veiled by a poor assumption of ease. &ldquo;Lie still, there&rsquo;s a
+darling, and go to sleep. Sleep&rsquo;s better for you than all the
+doctor&rsquo;s stuff.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who?&rdquo; repeated Susan. &ldquo;Something is wrong. Who?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, dear!&rdquo; said the woman. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing wrong.
+Willie has taken the turn, and is doing nicely.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Father?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well! he&rsquo;s all right now,&rdquo; she answered, looking another
+way, as if seeking for something.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then it&rsquo;s Michael! Oh, me! oh, me!&rdquo; 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you heard of no harm to him since?&rdquo; inquired Susan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bless the lass, no, for sure! I&rsquo;ve ne&rsquo;er heard his name
+named since I saw him go out of the yard as stout a man as ever trod
+shoe-leather.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;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
+&ldquo;natural,&rdquo; as they call an idiot in the Dales.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One June 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&mdash;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&mdash;poor
+Willie!&mdash;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Willie, darling,&rdquo; said Susan, &ldquo;don&rsquo;t make that
+noise&mdash;it makes my head ache.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She spoke feebly, and Willie did not seem to hear; at any rate, he continued
+his howl from time to time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hold thy noise, wilt&rsquo;a?&rdquo; said Michael, roughly, as he passed
+near him, and threatening him with his fist. Susan&rsquo;s back was turned to
+the pair. The expression of Willie&rsquo;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&rsquo;s
+manner, she looked anxiously at Michael for an explanation. Michael was
+irritated at Willie&rsquo;s defiance of him, and did not mince the matter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s just that the fever has left him silly&mdash;he never was as
+wise as other folk, and now I doubt if he will ever get right.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Susan did not speak, but she went very pale, and her lip quivered. She looked
+long and wistfully at Willie&rsquo;s face, as he watched the motion of the
+ducks in the great stable-pool. He laughed softly to himself every now and
+then.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Willie likes to see the ducks go overhead,&rdquo; said Susan,
+instinctively adopting the form of speech she would have used to a young child.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Willie, boo! Willie, boo!&rdquo; he replied, clapping his hands, and
+avoiding her eye.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Speak properly, Willie,&rdquo; said Susan, making a strong effort at
+self-control, and trying to arrest his attention.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You know who I am&mdash;tell me my name!&rdquo; 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&rsquo;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 &ldquo;Willie, boo! Willie, boo!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap03"></a>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s scoldings (which she did not spare him) that Susan
+had eaten nothing since he went away. But she was as inflexible as ever.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not just yet. Only not just yet. And don&rsquo;t say again that I do not
+love you,&rdquo; said she, suddenly hiding herself in his arms.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;the bonny harvest-moon&mdash;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Michael drew near to Susan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Susan,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;I took Will to see Dr. Preston, at Kendal.
+He&rsquo;s the first doctor in the county. I thought it were better for
+us&mdash;for you&mdash;to know at once what chance there were for him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well!&rdquo; said Susan, looking eagerly up. She saw the same strange
+glance of satisfaction, the same instant change to apparent regret and pain.
+&ldquo;What did he say?&rdquo; said she. &ldquo;Speak! can&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He said he would never get better of his weakness.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Never!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No; never. It&rsquo;s a long word, and hard to bear. And there&rsquo;s
+worse to come, dearest. The doctor thinks he will get badder from year to year.
+And he said, if he was us&mdash;you&mdash;he would send him off in time to
+Lancaster Asylum. They&rsquo;ve ways there both of keeping such people in order
+and making them happy. I only tell you what he said,&rdquo; continued he,
+seeing the gathering storm in her face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There was no harm in his saying it,&rdquo; she replied, with great
+self-constraint, forcing herself to speak coldly instead of angrily.
+&ldquo;Folk is welcome to their opinions.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They sat silent for a minute or two, her breast heaving with suppressed
+feeling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s counted a very clever man,&rdquo; said Michael at length.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He may be. He&rsquo;s none of my clever men, nor am I going to be guided
+by him, whatever he may think. And I don&rsquo;t thank them that went and took
+my poor lad to have such harsh notions formed about him. If I&rsquo;d been
+there, I could have called out the sense that is in him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well! I&rsquo;ll not say more to-night, Susan. You&rsquo;re not taking
+it rightly, and I&rsquo;d best be gone, and leave you to think it over.
+I&rsquo;ll not deny they are hard words to hear, but there&rsquo;s sense in
+them, as I take it; and I reckon you&rsquo;ll have to come to &rsquo;em.
+Anyhow, it&rsquo;s a bad way of thanking me for my pains, and I don&rsquo;t
+take it well in you, Susan,&rdquo; said he, getting up, as if offended.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Michael, I&rsquo;m beside myself with sorrow. Don&rsquo;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&rsquo;s come to, poor lile
+chap!&rdquo; She began to cry, and Michael to comfort her with caresses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t,&rdquo; said she. &ldquo;It&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you&rsquo;ll think it over, Susan, and remember what the doctor
+says?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t forget,&rdquo; said she. She meant she could not forget
+what the doctor had said about the hopelessness of her brother&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&mdash;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&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I never will let thee go, lad. Never! There&rsquo;s no knowing where
+they would take thee to, or what they would do with thee. As it says in the
+Bible, &lsquo;Nought but death shall part thee and me!&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thou wilt not bide in the same house with him, say&rsquo;st thou?
+There&rsquo;s no need for thy biding, as far as I can tell. There&rsquo;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&rsquo;s no
+tie that I know on to keep thee fro&rsquo; 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&rsquo;lt help me to take
+charge of Willie. If thou doesn&rsquo;t choose to marry me on those
+terms&mdash;why, I can snap my fingers at thee, never fear. I&rsquo;m not so
+far gone in love as that. But I will not have thee, if thou say&rsquo;st in
+such a hectoring way that Willie must go out of the house&mdash;and the house
+his own too&mdash;before thoul&rsquo;t set foot in it. Willie bides here, and I
+bide with him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thou hast may-be spoken a word too much,&rdquo; said Michael, pale with
+rage. &ldquo;If I am free, as thou say&rsquo;st, to go to Canada, or Botany
+Bay, I reckon I&rsquo;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&rsquo;t have both.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have chosen,&rdquo; said Susan, now perfectly composed and still.
+&ldquo;Whatever comes of it, I bide with Willie.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; replied Michael, trying to assume an equal composure
+of manner. &ldquo;Then I&rsquo;ll wish you a very good night.&rdquo; 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Whew!&rdquo; said he to himself, &ldquo;I think I must leave my lady
+alone for a week or two, and give her time to come to her senses. She&rsquo;ll
+not find it so easy as she thinks to let me go.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;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. &ldquo;It was no wonder,&rdquo; she
+said to herself, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;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&mdash;if he were only passing along the distant
+road&mdash;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;another chance! And so it went on for weeks. Peggy understood her
+young mistress&rsquo;s sorrow full well, and respected it by her silence on the
+subject. Willie seemed happier now that the irritation of Michael&rsquo;s
+presence was removed; for the poor idiot had a sort of antipathy to Michael,
+which was a kind of heart&rsquo;s echo to the repugnance in which the latter
+held him. Altogether, just at this time, Willie was the happiest of the three.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;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&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;At Thomas Applethwaite&rsquo;s, in Langdale. They had a kind of
+harvest-home, and he were there among the young folk, and very thick wi&rsquo;
+Nelly Hebthwaite, old Thomas&rsquo;s niece. Thou&rsquo;lt have to look after
+him a bit, Susan!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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, &ldquo;I can bear it without either wincing or
+blenching.&rdquo; 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&mdash;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&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It won&rsquo;t do,&rdquo; said she, at last. &ldquo;It will never do
+again.&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s hand, and the two went slowly into the
+house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Michael Hurst! does your sister speak truth, think you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He shuffled his position. He shuffled in his words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is it you ask? My sister has said many things.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I ask you,&rdquo; said Susan, trying to give a crystal clearness both to
+her expressions and her pronunciation, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But he may get dangerous; he can be but a trouble; his being here is a
+pain to you, Susan, not a pleasure.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I ask you for either yes or no,&rdquo; said she, a little contempt at
+his evading her question mingling with her tone. He perceived it, and it
+nettled him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And I have told you. I answered your question the last time I was here.
+I said I would ne&rsquo;er keep house with an idiot; no more I will. So now
+you&rsquo;ve gotten your answer.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have,&rdquo; said Susan. And she sighed deeply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come, now,&rdquo; said Mrs. Gale, encouraged by the sigh; &ldquo;one
+would think you don&rsquo;t love Michael, Susan, to be so stubborn in yielding
+to what I&rsquo;m sure would be best for the lad.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! she does not care for me,&rdquo; said Michael. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t
+believe she ever did.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t I? Haven&rsquo;t I?&rdquo; 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A knock at the door. It was Peggy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He wants for to see you, to wish you good-bye.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I cannot come. Oh, Peggy, send them away.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good go with them,&rdquo; said Peggy, as she grimly watched their
+retreating figures. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re rid of bad rubbish, anyhow.&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s eye; it was too full of sympathy. Her own cheeks were flushed,
+and her own eyes were dry and burning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where&rsquo;s the board, Peggy? We need clap-bread; and, I reckon,
+I&rsquo;ve time to get through with it to-night.&rdquo; Her voice had a sharp,
+dry tone in it, and her motions a jerking angularity about them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;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&rsquo;s breath, and looked
+into Peggy&rsquo;s eyes, while her own filled with the strange relief of tears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lass!&rdquo; said Peggy, solemnly, &ldquo;thou hast done well. It is not
+long to bide, and then the end will come.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you are very old, Peggy,&rdquo; said Susan, quivering.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is but a day sin&rsquo; I were young,&rdquo; replied Peggy; but she
+stopped the conversation by again pushing the cup with gentle force to
+Susan&rsquo;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&rsquo;clock before they thought of going to bed on that
+memorable night.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap04"></a>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+
+<p>
+The vehemence with which Susan Dixon threw herself into occupation could not
+last for ever. Times of languor and remembrance would come&mdash;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This time, last year,&rdquo; thought she, &ldquo;we went nutting
+together&mdash;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?&mdash;who?&mdash;who?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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 be 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&mdash;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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,&mdash;herself unseen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;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,&mdash;a dull, still, brooding weather
+had succeeded; it was a night to hear distant sounds. She heard horses&rsquo;
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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,&mdash;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;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&rsquo;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&mdash;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&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once this fit of violence lasted longer than usual. Susan&rsquo;s strength both
+of mind and body was nearly worn out; she wrestled in prayer that somehow it
+might end before she, too, was driven mad; or, worse, might be obliged to give
+up life&rsquo;s aim, and consign Willie to a madhouse. From that moment of
+prayer (as she afterwards superstitiously thought) Willie calmed&mdash;and then
+he drooped&mdash;and then he sank&mdash;and, last of all, he died in reality
+from physical exhaustion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he was so gentle and tender as he lay on his dying bed; such strange,
+child-like gleams of returning intelligence came over his face, long after the
+power to make his dull, inarticulate sounds had departed, that Susan was
+attracted to him by a stronger tie than she had ever felt before. It was
+something to have even an idiot loving her with dumb, wistful, animal
+affection; something to have any creature looking at her with such beseeching
+eyes, imploring protection from the insidious enemy stealing on. And yet she
+knew that to him death was no enemy, but a true friend, restoring light and
+health to his poor clouded mind. It was to her that death was an enemy; to her,
+the survivor, when Willie died; there was no one to love her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Worse doom still, there was no one left on earth for her to love.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You now know why no wandering tourist could persuade her to receive him as a
+lodger; why no tired traveller could melt her heart to afford him rest and
+refreshment; why long habits of seclusion had given her a moroseness of manner,
+and how care for the interests of another had rendered her keen and miserly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But there was a third act in the drama of her life.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap05"></a>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+
+<p>
+In spite of Peggy&rsquo;s prophecy that Susan&rsquo;s life should not seem
+long, it did seem wearisome and endless, as the years slowly uncoiled their
+monotonous circles. To be sure, she might have made change for herself, but she
+did not care to do it. It was, indeed, more than &ldquo;not caring,&rdquo;
+which merely implies a certain degree of <i>vis inertiæ</i> to be subdued
+before an object can be attained, and that the object itself does not seem to
+be of sufficient importance to call out the requisite energy. On the contrary,
+Susan exerted herself to avoid change and variety. She had a morbid dread of
+new faces, which originated in her desire to keep poor dead Willie&rsquo;s
+state a profound secret. She had a contempt for new customs; and, indeed, her
+old ways prospered so well under her active hand and vigilant eye, that it was
+difficult to know how they could be improved upon. She was regularly present in
+Coniston market with the best butter and the earliest chickens of the season.
+Those were the common farm produce that every farmer&rsquo;s wife about had to
+sell; but Susan, after she had disposed of the more feminine articles, turned
+to on the man&rsquo;s side. A better judge of a horse or cow there was not in
+all the country round. Yorkshire itself might have attempted to jockey her, and
+would have failed. Her corn was sound and clean; her potatoes well preserved to
+the latest spring. People began to talk of the hoards of money Susan Dixon must
+have laid up somewhere; and one young ne&rsquo;er-do-weel of a farmer&rsquo;s
+son undertook to make love to the woman of forty, who looked fifty-five, if a
+day. He made up to her by opening a gate on the road-path home, as she was
+riding on a bare-backed horse, her purchase not an hour ago. She was off before
+him, refusing his civility; but the remounting was not so easy, and rather than
+fail she did not choose to attempt it. She walked, and he walked alongside,
+improving his opportunity, which, as he vainly thought, had been consciously
+granted to him. As they drew near Yew Nook, he ventured on some expression of a
+wish to keep company with her. His words were vague and clumsily arranged.
+Susan turned round and coolly asked him to explain himself, he took courage, as
+he thought of her reputed wealth, and expressed his wishes this second time
+pretty plainly. To his surprise, the reply she made was in a series of smart
+strokes across his shoulders, administered through the medium of a supple
+hazel-switch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Take that!&rdquo; said she, almost breathless, &ldquo;to teach thee how
+thou darest make a fool of an honest woman old enough to be thy mother. If thou
+com&rsquo;st a step nearer the house, there&rsquo;s a good horse-pool, and
+there&rsquo;s two stout fellows who&rsquo;ll like no better fun than ducking
+thee. Be off wi&rsquo; thee!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And she strode into her own premises, never looking round to see whether he
+obeyed her injunction or not.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sometimes three or four years would pass over without her hearing Michael
+Hurst&rsquo;s name mentioned. She used to wonder at such times whether he were
+dead or alive. She would sit for hours by the dying embers of her fire on a
+winter&rsquo;s evening, trying to recall the scenes of her youth; trying to
+bring up living pictures of the faces she had then known&mdash;Michael&rsquo;s
+most especially. She thought it was possible, so long had been the lapse of
+years, that she might now pass by him in the street unknowing and unknown. His
+outward form she might not recognize, but himself she should feel in the thrill
+of her whole being. He could not pass her unawares.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What little she did hear about him, all testified a downward tendency. He
+drank&mdash;not at stated times when there was no other work to be done, but
+continually, whether it was seed-time or harvest. His children were all ill at
+the same time; then one died, while the others recovered, but were poor sickly
+things. No one dared to give Susan any direct intelligence of her former lover;
+many avoided all mention of his name in her presence; but a few spoke out
+either in indifference to, or ignorance of, those bygone days. Susan heard
+every word, every whisper, every sound that related to him. But her eye never
+changed, nor did a muscle of her face move.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Late one November night she sat over her fire; not a human being besides
+herself in the house; none but she had ever slept there since Willie&rsquo;s
+death. The farm-labourers had foddered the cattle and gone home hours before.
+There were crickets chirping all round the warm hearth-stones; there was the
+clock ticking with the peculiar beat Susan had known from her childhood, and
+which then and ever since she had oddly associated within the idea of a mother
+and child talking together, one loud tick, and quick&mdash;a feeble, sharp one
+following.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The day had been keen, and piercingly cold. The whole lift of heaven seemed a
+dome of iron. Black and frost-bound was the earth under the cruel east wind.
+Now the wind had dropped, and as the darkness had gathered in, the weather-wise
+old labourers prophesied snow. The sounds in the air arose again, as Susan sat
+still and silent. They were of a different character to what they had been
+during the prevalence of the east wind. Then they had been shrill and piping;
+now they were like low distant growling; not unmusical, but strangely
+threatening. Susan went to the window, and drew aside the little curtain. The
+whole world was white&mdash;the air was blinded with the swift and heavy fall
+of snow. At present it came down straight, but Susan knew those distant sounds
+in the hollows and gulleys of the hills portended a driving wind and a more
+cruel storm. She thought of her sheep; were they all folded? the new-born calf,
+was it bedded well? Before the drifts were formed too deep for her to pass in
+and out&mdash;and by the morning she judged that they would be six or seven
+feet deep&mdash;she would go out and see after the comfort of her beasts. She
+took a lantern, and tied a shawl over her head, and went out into the open air.
+She had tenderly provided for all her animals, and was returning, when, borne
+on the blast as if some spirit-cry&mdash;for it seemed to come rather down from
+the skies than from any creature standing on earth&rsquo;s level&mdash;she
+heard a voice of agony; she could not distinguish words; it seemed rather as if
+some bird of prey was being caught in the whirl of the icy wind, and torn and
+tortured by its violence. Again up high above! Susan put down her lantern, and
+shouted loud in return; it was an instinct, for if the creature were not human,
+which she had doubted but a moment before, what good could her responding cry
+do? And her cry was seized on by the tyrannous wind, and borne farther away in
+the opposite direction to that from which the call of agony had proceeded.
+Again she listened; no sound: then again it rang through space; and this time
+she was sure it was human. She turned into the house, and heaped turf and wood
+on the fire, which, careless of her own sensations, she had allowed to fade and
+almost die out. She put a new candle in her lantern; she changed her shawl for
+a maud, and leaving the door on latch, she sallied out. Just at the moment when
+her ear first encountered the weird noises of the storm, on issuing forth into
+the open air, she thought she heard the words, &ldquo;O God! O help!&rdquo;
+They were a guide to her, if words they were, for they came straight from a
+rock not a quarter of a mile from Yew Nook, but only to be reached, on account
+of its precipitous character, by a round-about path. Thither she steered,
+defying wind and snow; guided by here a thorn-tree, there an old, doddered oak,
+which had not quite lest their identity under the whelming mask of snow. Now
+and then she stopped to listen; but never a word or sound heard she, till right
+from where the copse-wood grew thick and tangled at the base of the rock, round
+which she was winding, she heard a moan. Into the brake&mdash;all snow in
+appearance&mdash;almost a plain of snow looked on from the little eminence
+where she stood&mdash;she plunged, breaking down the bush, stumbling, bruising
+herself, fighting her way; her lantern held between her teeth, and she herself
+using head as well as hands to butt away a passage, at whatever cost of bodily
+injury. As she climbed or staggered, owing to the unevenness of the
+snow-covered ground, where the briars and weeds of years were tangled and
+matted together, her foot felt something strangely soft and yielding. She
+lowered her lantern; there lay a man, prone on his face, nearly covered by the
+fast-falling flakes; he must have fallen from the rock above, as, not knowing
+of the circuitous path, he had tried to descend its steep, slippery face. Who
+could tell? it was no time for thinking. Susan lifted him up with her wiry
+strength; he gave no help&mdash;no sign of life; but for all that he might be
+alive: he was still warm; she tied her maud round him; she fastened the lantern
+to her apron-string; she held him tight: half-carrying,
+half-dragging&mdash;what did a few bruises signify to him, compared to dear
+life, to precious life! She got him through the brake, and down the path.
+There, for an instant, she stopped to take breath; but, as if stung by the
+Furies, she pushed on again with almost superhuman strength. Clasping him round
+the waist, and leaning his dead weight against the lintel of the door, she
+tried to undo the latch; but now, just at this moment, a trembling faintness
+came over her, and a fearful dread took possession of her&mdash;that here, on
+the very threshold of her home, she might be found dead, and buried under the
+snow, when the farm-servants came in the morning. This terror stirred her up to
+one more effort. Then she and her companion were in the warmth of the quiet
+haven of that kitchen; she laid him on the settle, and sank on the floor by his
+side. How long she remained in this swoon she could not tell; not very long she
+judged by the fire, which was still red and sullenly glowing when she came to
+herself. She lighted the candle, and bent over her late burden to ascertain if
+indeed he were dead. She stood long gazing. The man lay dead. There could be no
+doubt about it. His filmy eyes glared at her, unshut. But Susan was not one to
+be affrighted by the stony aspect of death. It was not that; it was the bitter,
+woeful recognition of Michael Hurst!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was convinced he was dead; but after a while she refused to believe in her
+conviction. She stripped off his wet outer-garments with trembling, hurried
+hands. She brought a blanket down from her own bed; she made up the fire. She
+swathed him in fresh, warm wrappings, and laid him on the flags before the
+fire, sitting herself at his head, and holding it in her lap, while she
+tenderly wiped his loose, wet hair, curly still, although its colour had
+changed from nut-brown to iron-gray since she had seen it last. From time to
+time she bent over the face afresh, sick, and fain to believe that the flicker
+of the fire-light was some slight convulsive motion. But the dim, staring eyes
+struck chill to her heart. At last she ceased her delicate, busy cares: but she
+still held the head softly, as if caressing it. She thought over all the
+possibilities and chances in the mingled yarn of their lives that might, by so
+slight a turn, have ended far otherwise. If her mother&rsquo;s cold had been
+early tended, so that the responsibility as to her brother&rsquo;s weal or woe
+had not fallen upon her; if the fever had not taken such rough, cruel hold on
+Will; nay, if Mrs. Gale, that hard, worldly sister, had not accompanied him on
+his last visit to Yew Nook&mdash;his very last before this fatal, stormy might;
+if she had heard his cry,&mdash;cry uttered by these pale, dead lips with such
+wild, despairing agony, not yet three hours ago!&mdash;O! if she had but heard
+it sooner, he might have been saved before that blind, false step had
+precipitated him down the rock! In going over this weary chain of unrealized
+possibilities, Susan learnt the force of Peggy&rsquo;s words. Life was short,
+looking back upon it. It seemed but yesterday since all the love of her being
+had been poured out, and run to waste. The intervening years&mdash;the long
+monotonous years that had turned her into an old woman before her
+time&mdash;were but a dream.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The labourers coming in the dawn of the winter&rsquo;s day were surprised to
+see the fire-light through the low kitchen-window. They knocked, and hearing a
+moaning answer, they entered, fearing that something had befallen their
+mistress. For all explanation they got these words
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is Michael Hurst. He was belated, and fell down the Raven&rsquo;s
+Crag. Where does Eleanor, his wife, live?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How Michael Hurst got to Yew Nook no one but Susan ever knew. They thought he
+had dragged himself there, with some sore internal bruise sapping away his
+minuted life. They could not have believed the superhuman exertion which had
+first sought him out, and then dragged him hither. Only Susan knew of that.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She gave him into the charge of her servants, and went out and saddled her
+horse. Where the wind had drifted the snow on one side, and the road was clear
+and bare, she rode, and rode fast; where the soft, deceitful heaps were massed
+up, she dismounted and led her steed, plunging in deep, with fierce energy, the
+pain at her heart urging her onwards with a sharp, digging spur.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The gray, solemn, winter&rsquo;s noon was more night-like than the depth of
+summer&rsquo;s night; dim-purple brooded the low skies over the white earth, as
+Susan rode up to what had been Michael Hurst&rsquo;s abode while living. It was
+a small farm-house carelessly kept outside, slatternly tended within. The
+pretty Nelly Hebthwaite was pretty still; her delicate face had never suffered
+from any long-enduring feeling. If anything, its expression was that of
+plaintive sorrow; but the soft, light hair had scarcely a tinge of gray; the
+wood-rose tint of complexion yet remained, if not so brilliant as in youth; the
+straight nose, the small mouth were untouched by time. Susan felt the contrast
+even at that moment. She knew that her own skin was weather-beaten, furrowed,
+brown,&mdash;that her teeth were gone, and her hair gray and ragged. And yet
+she was not two years older than Nelly,&mdash;she had not been, in youth, when
+she took account of these things. Nelly stood wondering at the strange-enough
+horse-woman, who stopped and panted at the door, holding her horse&rsquo;s
+bridle, and refusing to enter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where is Michael Hurst?&rdquo; asked Susan, at last.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I can&rsquo;t rightly say. He should have been at home last night,
+but he was off, seeing after a public-house to be let at Ulverstone, for our
+farm does not answer, and we were thinking&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He did not come home last night?&rdquo; said Susan, cutting short the
+story, and half-affirming, half-questioning, by way of letting in a ray of the
+awful light before she let it full in, in its consuming wrath.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No! he&rsquo;ll be stopping somewhere out Ulverstone ways. I&rsquo;m
+sure we&rsquo;ve need of him at home, for I&rsquo;ve no one but lile Tommy to
+help me tend the beasts. Things have not gone well with us, and we don&rsquo;t
+keep a servant now. But you&rsquo;re trembling all over, ma&rsquo;am.
+You&rsquo;d better come in, and take something warm, while your horse rests.
+That&rsquo;s the stable-door, to your left.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Susan took her horse there; loosened his girths, and rubbed him down with a
+wisp of straw. Then she hooked about her for hay; but the place was bare of
+feed, and smelt damp and unused. She went to the house, thankful for the
+respite, and got some clap-bread, which she mashed up in a pailful of lukewarm
+water. Every moment was a respite, and yet every moment made her dread the more
+the task that lay before her. It would be longer than she thought at first. She
+took the saddle off, and hung about her horse, which seemed, somehow, more like
+a friend than anything else in the world. She laid her cheek against its neck,
+and rested there, before returning to the house for the last time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Eleanor had brought down one of her own gowns, which hung on a chair against
+the fire, and had made her unknown visitor a cup of hot tea. Susan could hardly
+bear all these little attentions: they choked her, and yet she was so wet, so
+weak with fatigue and excitement, that she could neither resist by voice or by
+action. Two children stood awkwardly about, puzzled at the scene, and even
+Eleanor began to wish for some explanation of who her strange visitor was.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve, maybe, heard him speaking of me? I&rsquo;m called Susan
+Dixon.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nelly coloured, and avoided meeting Susan&rsquo;s eye.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve heard other folk speak of you. He never named your
+name.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This respect of silence came like balm to Susan: balm not felt or heeded at the
+time it was applied, but very grateful in its effects for all that.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He is at my house,&rdquo; continued Susan, determined not to stop or
+quaver in the operation&mdash;the pain which must be inflicted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;At your house? Yew Nook?&rdquo; questioned Eleanor, surprised.
+&ldquo;How came he there?&rdquo;&mdash;half jealously. &ldquo;Did he take
+shelter from the coming storm? Tell me,&mdash;there is something&mdash;tell me,
+woman!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He took no shelter. Would to God he had!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;O! would to God! would to God!&rdquo; shrieked out Eleanor, learning all
+from the woful import of those dreary eyes. Her cries thrilled through the
+house; the children&rsquo;s piping wailings and passionate cries on
+&ldquo;Daddy! Daddy!&rdquo; pierced into Susan&rsquo;s very marrow. But she
+remained as still and tearless as the great round face upon the clock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last, in a lull of crying, she said,&mdash;not exactly questioning, but as
+if partly to herself&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You loved him, then?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Loved him! he was my husband! He was the father of three bonny bairns
+that lie dead in Grasmere churchyard. I wish you&rsquo;d go, Susan Dixon, and
+let me weep without your watching me! I wish you&rsquo;d never come near the
+place.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Alas! alas! it would not have brought him to life. I would have laid
+down my own to save his. My life has been so very sad! No one would have cared
+if I had died. Alas! alas!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The tone in which she said this was so utterly mournful and despairing that it
+awed Nelly into quiet for a time. But by-and-by she said, &ldquo;I would not
+turn a dog out to do it harm; but the night is clear, and Tommy shall guide you
+to the Red Cow. But, oh, I want to be alone! If you&rsquo;ll come back
+to-morrow, I&rsquo;ll be better, and I&rsquo;ll hear all, and thank you for
+every kindness you have shown him,&mdash;and I do believe you&rsquo;ve showed
+him kindness,&mdash;though I don&rsquo;t know why.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Susan moved heavily and strangely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She said something&mdash;her words came thick and unintelligible. She had had a
+paralytic stroke since she had last spoken. She could not go, even if she
+would. Nor did Eleanor, when she became aware of the state of the case, wish
+her to leave. She had her laid on her own bed, and weeping silently all the
+while for her last husband, she nursed Susan like a sister. She did not know
+what her guest&rsquo;s worldly position might be; and she might never be
+repaid. But she sold many a little trifle to purchase such small comforts as
+Susan needed. Susan, lying still and motionless, learnt much. It was not a
+severe stroke; it might be the forerunner of others yet to come, but at some
+distance of time. But for the present she recovered, and regained much of her
+former health. On her sick-bed she matured her plans. When she returned to Yew
+Nook, she took Michael Hurst&rsquo;s widow and children with her to live there,
+and fill up the haunted hearth with living forms that should banish the ghosts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so it fell out that the latter days of Susan Dixon&rsquo;s life were better
+than the former.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
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+This etext was prepared by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+from the 1896 "Lizzie Leigh and Other Tales" Macmillan and Co. edition.
+
+
+
+
+
+HALF A LIFE-TIME AGO.
+
+by Elizabeth Gaskell
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+
+Half a life-time ago, there lived in one of the Westmoreland dales a
+single woman, of the name of Susan Dixon.  She was owner of the small
+farm-house where she resided, and of some thirty or forty acres of
+land by which it was surrounded.  She had also an hereditary right to
+a sheep-walk, extending to the wild fells that overhang Blea Tarn.
+In the language of the country she was a Stateswoman.  Her house is
+yet to be seen on the Oxenfell road, between Skelwith and Coniston.
+You go along a moorland track, made by the carts that occasionally
+came for turf from the Oxenfell.  A brook babbles and brattles by the
+wayside, giving you a sense of companionship, which relieves the deep
+solitude in which this way is usually traversed.  Some miles on this
+side of Coniston there is a farmstead--a gray stone house, and a
+square of farm-buildings surrounding a green space of rough turf, in
+the midst of which stands a mighty, funereal umbrageous yew, making a
+solemn shadow, as of death, in the very heart and centre of the light
+and heat of the brightest summer day.  On the side away from the
+house, this yard slopes down to a dark-brown pool, which is supplied
+with fresh water from the overflowings of a stone cistern, into which
+some rivulet of the brook before-mentioned continually and
+melodiously falls bubbling.  The cattle drink out of this cistern.
+The household bring their pitchers and fill them with drinking-water
+by a dilatory, yet pretty, process.  The water-carrier brings with
+her a leaf of the hound's-tongue fern, and, inserting it in the
+crevice of the gray rock, makes a cool, green spout for the sparkling
+stream.
+
+The house is no specimen, at the present day, of what it was in the
+lifetime of Susan Dixon.  Then, every small diamond pane in the
+windows glittered with cleanliness.  You might have eaten off the
+floor; you could see yourself in the pewter plates and the polished
+oaken awmry, or dresser, of the state kitchen into which you entered.
+Few strangers penetrated further than this room.  Once or twice,
+wandering tourists, attracted by the lonely picturesqueness of the
+situation, and the exquisite cleanliness of the house itself, made
+their way into this house-place, and offered money enough (as they
+thought) to tempt the hostess to receive them as lodgers.  They would
+give no trouble, they said; they would be out rambling or sketching
+all day long; would be perfectly content with a share of the food
+which she provided for herself; or would procure what they required
+from the Waterhead Inn at Coniston.  But no liberal sum--no fair
+words--moved her from her stony manner, or her monotonous tone of
+indifferent refusal.  No persuasion could induce her to show any more
+of the house than that first room; no appearance of fatigue procured
+for the weary an invitation to sit down and rest; and if one more
+bold and less delicate did so without being asked, Susan stood by,
+cold and apparently deaf, or only replying by the briefest
+monosyllables, till the unwelcome visitor had departed.  Yet those
+with whom she had dealings, in the way of selling her cattle or her
+farm produce, spoke of her as keen after a bargain--a hard one to
+have to do with; and she never spared herself exertion or fatigue, at
+market or in the field, to make the most of her produce.  She led the
+hay-makers with her swift, steady rake, and her noiseless evenness of
+motion.  She was about among the earliest in the market, examining
+samples of oats, pricing them, and then turning with grim
+satisfaction to her own cleaner corn.
+
+She was served faithfully and long by those who were rather her
+fellow-labourers than her servants.  She was even and just in her
+dealings with them.  If she was peculiar and silent, they knew her,
+and knew that she might be relied on.  Some of them had known her
+from her childhood; and deep in their hearts was an unspoken--almost
+unconscious--pity for her, for they knew her story, though they never
+spoke of it.
+
+Yes; the time had been when that tall, gaunt, hard-featured, angular
+woman--who never smiled, and hardly ever spoke an unnecessary word--
+had been a fine-looking girl, bright-spirited and rosy; and when the
+hearth at the Yew Nook had been as bright as she, with family love
+and youthful hope and mirth.  Fifty or fifty-one years ago, William
+Dixon and his wife Margaret were alive; and Susan, their daughter,
+was about eighteen years old--ten years older than the only other
+child, a boy named after his father.  William and Margaret Dixon were
+rather superior people, of a character belonging--as far as I have
+seen--exclusively to the class of Westmoreland and Cumberland
+statesmen--just, independent, upright; not given to much speaking;
+kind-hearted, but not demonstrative; disliking change, and new ways,
+and new people; sensible and shrewd; each household self-contained,
+and its members having little curiosity as to their neighbours, with
+whom they rarely met for any social intercourse, save at the stated
+times of sheep-shearing and Christmas; having a certain kind of sober
+pleasure in amassing money, which occasionally made them miserable
+(as they call miserly people up in the north) in their old age;
+reading no light or ephemeral literature, but the grave, solid books
+brought round by the pedlars (such as the "Paradise Lost" and
+"Regained,'" "The Death of Abel," "The Spiritual Quixote," and "The
+Pilgrim's Progress"), were to be found in nearly every house:  the
+men occasionally going off laking, i.e. playing, i.e. drinking for
+days together, and having to be hunted up by anxious wives, who dared
+not leave their husbands to the chances of the wild precipitous
+roads, but walked miles and miles, lantern in hand, in the dead of
+night, to discover and guide the solemnly-drunken husband home; who
+had a dreadful headache the next day, and the day after that came
+forth as grave, and sober, and virtuous looking as if there were no
+such thing as malt and spirituous liquors in the world; and who were
+seldom reminded of their misdoings by their wives, to whom such
+occasional outbreaks were as things of course, when once the
+immediate anxiety produced by them was over.  Such were--such are--
+the characteristics of a class now passing away from the face of the
+land, as their compeers, the yeomen, have done before them.  Of such
+was William Dixon.  He was a shrewd clever farmer, in his day and
+generation, when shrewdness was rather shown in the breeding and
+rearing of sheep and cattle than in the cultivation of land.  Owing
+to this character of his, statesmen from a distance from beyond
+Kendal, or from Borrowdale, of greater wealth than he, would send
+their sons to be farm-servants for a year or two with him, in order
+to learn some of his methods before setting up on land of their own.
+When Susan, his daughter, was about seventeen, one Michael Hurst was
+farm-servant at Yew Nook.  He worked with the master, and lived with
+the family, and was in all respects treated as an equal, except in
+the field.  His father was a wealthy statesman at Wythburne, up
+beyond Grasmere; and through Michael's servitude the families had
+become acquainted, and the Dixons went over to the High Beck sheep-
+shearing, and the Hursts came down by Red Bank and Loughrig Tarn and
+across the Oxenfell when there was the Christmas-tide feasting at Yew
+Nook.  The fathers strolled round the fields together, examined
+cattle and sheep, and looked knowing over each other's horses.  The
+mothers inspected the dairies and household arrangements, each openly
+admiring the plans of the other, but secretly preferring their own.
+Both fathers and mothers cast a glance from time to time at Michael
+and Susan, who were thinking of nothing less than farm or dairy, but
+whose unspoken attachment was, in all ways, so suitable and natural a
+thing that each parent rejoiced over it, although with characteristic
+reserve it was never spoken about--not even between husband and wife.
+
+Susan had been a strong, independent, healthy girl; a clever help to
+her mother, and a spirited companion to her father; more of a man in
+her (as he often said) than her delicate little brother ever would
+have.  He was his mother's darling, although she loved Susan well.
+There was no positive engagement between Michael and Susan--I doubt
+whether even plain words of love had been spoken; when one winter-
+time Margaret Dixon was seized with inflammation consequent upon a
+neglected cold.  She had always been strong and notable, and had been
+too busy to attend to the early symptoms of illness.  It would go
+off, she said to the woman who helped in the kitchen; or if she did
+not feel better when they had got the hams and bacon out of hand, she
+would take some herb-tea and nurse up a bit.  But Death could not
+wait till the hams and bacon were cured:  he came on with rapid
+strides, and shooting arrows of portentous agony.  Susan had never
+seen illness--never knew how much she loved her mother till now, when
+she felt a dreadful, instinctive certainty that she was losing her.
+Her mind was thronged with recollections of the many times she had
+slighted her mother's wishes; her heart was full of the echoes of
+careless and angry replies that she had spoken.  What would she not
+now give to have opportunities of service and obedience, and trials
+of her patience and love, for that dear mother who lay gasping in
+torture!  And yet Susan had been a good girl and an affectionate
+daughter.
+
+The sharp pain went off, and delicious ease came on; yet still her
+mother sunk.  In the midst of this languid peace she was dying.  She
+motioned Susan to her bedside, for she could only whisper; and then,
+while the father was out of the room, she spoke as much to the eager,
+hungering eyes of her daughter by the motion of her lips, as by the
+slow, feeble sounds of her voice.
+
+"Susan, lass, thou must not fret.  It is God's will, and thou wilt
+have a deal to do.  Keep father straight if thou canst; and if he
+goes out Ulverstone ways, see that thou meet him before he gets to
+the Old Quarry.  It's a dree bit for a man who has had a drop.  As
+for lile Will"--Here the poor woman's face began to work and her
+fingers to move nervously as they lay on the bed-quilt--"lile Will
+will miss me most of all.  Father's often vexed with him because he's
+not a quick strong lad; he is not, my poor lile chap.  And father
+thinks he's saucy, because he cannot always stomach oat-cake and
+porridge.  There's better than three pound in th' old black tea-pot
+on the top shelf of the cupboard.  Just keep a piece of loaf-bread by
+you, Susan dear, for Will to come to when he's not taken his
+breakfast.  I have, may be, spoilt him; but there'll be no one to
+spoil him now."
+
+She began to cry a low, feeble cry, and covered up her face that
+Susan might not see her.  That dear face! those precious moments
+while yet the eyes could look out with love and intelligence.  Susan
+laid her head down close by her mother's ear.
+
+"Mother I'll take tent of Will.  Mother, do you hear?  He shall not
+want ought I can give or get for him, least of all the kind words
+which you had ever ready for us both.  Bless you! bless you! my own
+mother."
+
+"Thou'lt promise me that, Susan, wilt thou?  I can die easy if
+thou'lt take charge of him.  But he's hardly like other folk; he
+tries father at times, though I think father'll be tender of him when
+I'm gone, for my sake.  And, Susan, there's one thing more.  I never
+spoke on it for fear of the bairn being called a tell-tale, but I
+just comforted him up.  He vexes Michael at times, and Michael has
+struck him before now.  I did not want to make a stir; but he's not
+strong, and a word from thee, Susan, will go a long way with
+Michael."
+
+Susan was as red now as she had been pale before; it was the first
+time that her influence over Michael had been openly acknowledged by
+a third person, and a flash of joy came athwart the solemn sadness of
+the moment.  Her mother had spoken too much, and now came on the
+miserable faintness.  She never spoke again coherently; but when her
+children and her husband stood by her bedside, she took lile Will's
+hand and put it into Susan's, and looked at her with imploring eyes.
+Susan clasped her arms round Will, and leaned her head upon his
+little curly one, and vowed within herself to be as a mother to him.
+
+Henceforward she was all in all to her brother.  She was a more
+spirited and amusing companion to him than his mother had been, from
+her greater activity, and perhaps, also, from her originality of
+character, which often prompted her to perform her habitual actions
+in some new and racy manner.  She was tender to lile Will when she
+was prompt and sharp with everybody else--with Michael most of all;
+for somehow the girl felt that, unprotected by her mother, she must
+keep up her own dignity, and not allow her lover to see how strong a
+hold he had upon her heart.  He called her hard and cruel, and left
+her so; and she smiled softly to herself, when his back was turned,
+to think how little he guessed how deeply he was loved.  For Susan
+was merely comely and fine looking; Michael was strikingly handsome,
+admired by all the girls for miles round, and quite enough of a
+country coxcomb to know it and plume himself accordingly.  He was the
+second son of his father; the eldest would have High Beck farm, of
+course, but there was a good penny in the Kendal bank in store for
+Michael.  When harvest was over, he went to Chapel Langdale to learn
+to dance; and at night, in his merry moods, he would do his steps on
+the flag floor of the Yew Nook kitchen, to the secret admiration of
+Susan, who had never learned dancing, but who flouted him
+perpetually, even while she admired, in accordance with the rule she
+seemed to have made for herself about keeping him at a distance so
+long as he lived under the same roof with her.  One evening he sulked
+at some saucy remark of hers; he sitting in the chimney corner with
+his arms on his knees, and his head bent forwards, lazily gazing into
+the wood-fire on the hearth, and luxuriating in rest after a hard
+day's labour; she sitting among the geraniums on the long, low
+window-seat, trying to catch the last slanting rays of the autumnal
+light to enable her to finish stitching a shirt-collar for Will, who
+lounged full length on the flags at the other side of the hearth to
+Michael, poking the burning wood from time to time with a long hazel-
+stick to bring out the leap of glittering sparks.
+
+"And if you can dance a threesome reel, what good does it do ye?"
+asked Susan, looking askance at Michael, who had just been vaunting
+his proficiency.  "Does it help you plough, reap, or even climb the
+rocks to take a raven's nest?  If I were a man, I'd be ashamed to
+give in to such softness."
+
+"If you were a man, you'd be glad to do anything which made the
+pretty girls stand round and admire."
+
+"As they do to you, eh!  Ho, Michael, that would not be my way o'
+being a man!"
+
+"What would then?" asked he, after a pause, during which he had
+expected in vain that she would go on with her sentence.  No answer.
+
+"I should not like you as a man, Susy; you'd be too hard and
+headstrong."
+
+"Am I hard and headstrong?" asked she, with as indifferent a tone as
+she could assume, but which yet had a touch of pique in it.  His
+quick ear detected the inflexion.
+
+"No, Susy!  You're wilful at times, and that's right enough.  I don't
+like a girl without spirit.  There's a mighty pretty girl comes to
+the dancing class; but she is all milk and water.  Her eyes never
+flash like yours when you're put out; why, I can see them flame
+across the kitchen like a cat's in the dark.  Now, if you were a man,
+I should feel queer before those looks of yours; as it is, I rather
+like them, because--"
+
+"Because what?" asked she, looking up and perceiving that he had
+stolen close up to her.
+
+"Because I can make all right in this way," said he, kissing her
+suddenly.
+
+"Can you?" said she, wrenching herself out of his grasp and panting,
+half with rage.  "Take that, by way of proof that making right is
+none so easy."  And she boxed his ears pretty sharply.  He went back
+to his seat discomfited and out of temper.  She could no longer see
+to look, even if her face had not burnt and her eyes dazzled, but she
+did not choose to move her seat, so she still preserved her stooping
+attitude and pretended to go on sewing.
+
+"Eleanor Hebthwaite may be milk-and-water," muttered he, "but--
+Confound thee, lad! what art thou doing?" exclaimed Michael, as a
+great piece of burning wood was cast into his face by an unlucky poke
+of Will's.  "Thou great lounging, clumsy chap, I'll teach thee
+better!" and with one or two good round kicks he sent the lad
+whimpering away into the back-kitchen.  When he had a little
+recovered himself from his passion, he saw Susan standing before him,
+her face looking strange and almost ghastly by the reversed position
+of the shadows, arising from the firelight shining upwards right
+under it.
+
+"I tell thee what, Michael," said she, "that lad's motherless, but
+not friendless."
+
+"His own father leathers him, and why should not I, when he's given
+me such a burn on my face?" said Michael, putting up his hand to his
+cheek as if in pain.
+
+"His father's his father, and there is nought more to be said.  But
+if he did burn thee, it was by accident, and not o' purpose; as thou
+kicked him, it's a mercy if his ribs are not broken."
+
+"He howls loud enough, I'm sure.  I might ha' kicked many a lad twice
+as hard, and they'd ne'er ha' said ought but 'damn ye;' but yon lad
+must needs cry out like a stuck pig if one touches him;" replied
+Michael, sullenly.
+
+Susan went back to the window-seat, and looked absently out of the
+window at the drifting clouds for a minute or two, while her eyes
+filled with tears.  Then she got up and made for the outer door which
+led into the back-kitchen.  Before she reached it, however, she heard
+a low voice, whose music made her thrill, say -
+
+"Susan, Susan!"
+
+Her heart melted within her, but it seemed like treachery to her poor
+boy, like faithlessness to her dead mother, to turn to her lover
+while the tears which he had caused to flow were yet unwiped on
+Will's cheeks.  So she seemed to take no heed, but passed into the
+darkness, and, guided by the sobs, she found her way to where Willie
+sat crouched among the disused tubs and churns.
+
+"Come out wi' me, lad;" and they went out into the orchard, where the
+fruit-trees were bare of leaves, but ghastly in their tattered
+covering of gray moss:  and the soughing November wind came with long
+sweeps over the fells till it rattled among the crackling boughs,
+underneath which the brother and sister sat in the dark; he in her
+lap, and she hushing his head against her shoulder.
+
+"Thou should'st na' play wi' fire.  It's a naughty trick.  Thoul't
+suffer for it in worse ways nor this before thou'st done, I'm
+afeared.  I should ha' hit thee twice as lungeous kicks as Mike, if
+I'd been in his place.  He did na' hurt thee, I am sure," she
+assumed, half as a question.
+
+"Yes but he did.  He turned me quite sick."  And he let his head fall
+languidly down on his sister's breast.
+
+"Come, lad! come, lad!" said she anxiously.  "Be a man.  It was not
+much that I saw.  Why, when first the red cow came she kicked me far
+harder for offering to milk her before her legs were tied.  See thee!
+here's a peppermint-drop, and I'll make thee a pasty to-night; only
+don't give way so, for it hurts me sore to think that Michael has
+done thee any harm, my pretty."
+
+Willie roused himself up, and put back the wet and ruffled hair from
+his heated face; and he and Susan rose up, and hand-in-hand went
+towards the house, walking slowly and quietly except for a kind of
+sob which Willie could not repress.  Susan took him to the pump and
+washed his tear-stained face, till she thought she had obliterated
+all traces of the recent disturbance, arranging his curls for him,
+and then she kissed him tenderly, and led him in, hoping to find
+Michael in the kitchen, and make all straight between them.  But the
+blaze had dropped down into darkness; the wood was a heap of gray
+ashes in which the sparks ran hither and thither; but even in the
+groping darkness Susan knew by the sinking at her heart that Michael
+was not there.  She threw another brand on the hearth and lighted the
+candle, and sat down to her work in silence.  Willie cowered on his
+stool by the side of the fire, eyeing his sister from time to time,
+and sorry and oppressed, he knew not why, by the sight of her grave,
+almost stern face.  No one came.  They two were in the house alone.
+The old woman who helped Susan with the household work had gone out
+for the night to some friend's dwelling.  William Dixon, the father,
+was up on the fells seeing after his sheep.  Susan had no heart to
+prepare the evening meal.
+
+"Susy, darling, are you angry with me?" said Willie, in his little
+piping, gentle voice.  He had stolen up to his sister's side.  "I
+won't never play with the fire again; and I'll not cry if Michael
+does kick me.  Only don't look so like dead mother--don't--don't--
+please don't!" he exclaimed, hiding his face on her shoulder.
+
+"I'm not angry, Willie," said she.  "Don't be feared on me.  You want
+your supper, and you shall have it; and don't you be feared on
+Michael.  He shall give reason for every hair of your head that he
+touches--he shall."
+
+When William Dixon came home he found Susan and Willie sitting
+together, hand-in-hand, and apparently pretty cheerful.  He bade them
+go to bed, for that he would sit up for Michael; and the next
+morning, when Susan came down, she found that Michael had started an
+hour before with the cart for lime.  It was a long day's work; Susan
+knew it would be late, perhaps later than on the preceding night,
+before he returned--at any rate, past her usual bed-time; and on no
+account would she stop up a minute beyond that hour in the kitchen,
+whatever she might do in her bed-room.  Here she sat and watched till
+past midnight; and when she saw him coming up the brow with the
+carts, she knew full well, even in that faint moonlight, that his
+gait was the gait of a man in liquor.  But though she was annoyed and
+mortified to find in what way he had chosen to forget her, the fact
+did not disgust or shock her as it would have done many a girl, even
+at that day, who had not been brought up as Susan had, among a class
+who considered it no crime, but rather a mark of spirit, in a man to
+get drunk occasionally.  Nevertheless, she chose to hold herself very
+high all the next day when Michael was, perforce, obliged to give up
+any attempt to do heavy work, and hung about the out-buildings and
+farm in a very disconsolate and sickly state.  Willie had far more
+pity on him than Susan.  Before evening, Willie and he were fast,
+and, on his side, ostentatious friends.  Willie rode the horses down
+to water; Willie helped him to chop wood.  Susan sat gloomily at her
+work, hearing an indistinct but cheerful conversation going on in the
+shippon, while the cows were being milked.  She almost felt irritated
+with her little brother, as if he were a traitor, and had gone over
+to the enemy in the very battle that she was fighting in his cause.
+She was alone with no one to speak to, while they prattled on
+regardless if she were glad or sorry.
+
+Soon Willie burst in.  "Susan!  Susan! come with me; I've something
+so pretty to show you.  Round the corner of the barn--run! run!"  (He
+was dragging her along, half reluctant, half desirous of some change
+in that weary day.  Round the corner of the barn; and caught hold of
+by Michael, who stood there awaiting her.
+
+"O Willie!" cried she "you naughty boy.  There is nothing pretty--
+what have you brought me here for?  Let me go; I won't be held."
+
+"Only one word.  Nay, if you wish it so much, you may go," said
+Michael, suddenly loosing his hold as she struggled.  But now she was
+free, she only drew off a step or two, murmuring something about
+Willie.
+
+"You are going, then?" said Michael, with seeming sadness.  "You
+won't hear me say a word of what is in my heart."
+
+"How can I tell whether it is what I should like to hear?" replied
+she, still drawing back.
+
+"That is just what I want you to tell me; I want you to hear it and
+then to tell me whether you like it or not."
+
+"Well, you may speak," replied she, turning her back, and beginning
+to plait the hem of her apron.
+
+He came close to her ear.
+
+"I'm sorry I hurt Willie the other night.  He has forgiven me.  Can
+you?"
+
+"You hurt him very badly," she replied.  "But you are right to be
+sorry.  I forgive you."
+
+"Stop, stop!" said he, laying his hand upon her arm.  "There is
+something more I've got to say.  I want you to be my--what is it they
+call it, Susan?"
+
+"I don't know," said she, half-laughing, but trying to get away with
+all her might now; and she was a strong girl, but she could not
+manage it.
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+Once this fit of violence lasted longer than usual.  Susan's strength
+both of mind and body was nearly worn out; she wrestled in prayer
+that somehow it might end before she, too, was driven mad; or, worse,
+might be obliged to give up life's aim, and consign Willie to a
+madhouse.  From that moment of prayer (as she afterwards
+superstitiously thought) Willie calmed--and then he drooped--and then
+he sank--and, last of all, he died in reality from physical
+exhaustion.
+
+But he was so gentle and tender as he lay on his dying bed; such
+strange, child-like gleams of returning intelligence came over his
+face, long after the power to make his dull, inarticulate sounds had
+departed, that Susan was attracted to him by a stronger tie than she
+had ever felt before.  It was something to have even an idiot loving
+her with dumb, wistful, animal affection; something to have any
+creature looking at her with such beseeching eyes, imploring
+protection from the insidious enemy stealing on.  And yet she knew
+that to him death was no enemy, but a true friend, restoring light
+and health to his poor clouded mind.  It was to her that death was an
+enemy; to her, the survivor, when Willie died; there was no one to
+love her.
+
+Worse doom still, there was no one left on earth for her to love.
+
+You now know why no wandering tourist could persuade her to receive
+him as a lodger; why no tired traveller could melt her heart to
+afford him rest and refreshment; why long habits of seclusion had
+given her a moroseness of manner, and how care for the interests of
+another had rendered her keen and miserly.
+
+But there was a third act in the drama of her life.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+
+In spite of Peggy's prophecy that Susan's life should not seem long,
+it did seem wearisome and endless, as the years slowly uncoiled their
+monotonous circles.  To be sure, she might have made change for
+herself, but she did not care to do it.  It was, indeed, more than
+"not caring," which merely implies a certain degree of vis inertiae
+to be subdued before an object can be attained, and that the object
+itself does not seem to be of sufficient importance to call out the
+requisite energy.  On the contrary, Susan exerted herself to avoid
+change and variety.  She had a morbid dread of new faces, which
+originated in her desire to keep poor dead Willie's state a profound
+secret.  She had a contempt for new customs; and, indeed, her old
+ways prospered so well under her active hand and vigilant eye, that
+it was difficult to know how they could be improved upon.  She was
+regularly present in Coniston market with the best butter and the
+earliest chickens of the season.  Those were the common farm produce
+that every farmer's wife about had to sell; but Susan, after she had
+disposed of the more feminine articles, turned to on the man's side.
+A better judge of a horse or cow there was not in all the country
+round.  Yorkshire itself might have attempted to jockey her, and
+would have failed.  Her corn was sound and clean; her potatoes well
+preserved to the latest spring.  People began to talk of the hoards
+of money Susan Dixon must have laid up somewhere; and one young
+ne'er-do-weel of a farmer's son undertook to make love to the woman
+of forty, who looked fifty-five, if a day.  He made up to her by
+opening a gate on the road-path home, as she was riding on a bare-
+backed horse, her purchase not an hour ago.  She was off before him,
+refusing his civility; but the remounting was not so easy, and rather
+than fail she did not choose to attempt it.  She walked, and he
+walked alongside, improving his opportunity, which, as he vainly
+thought, had been consciously granted to him.  As they drew near Yew
+Nook, he ventured on some expression of a wish to keep company with
+her.  His words were vague and clumsily arranged.  Susan turned round
+and coolly asked him to explain himself, he took courage, as he
+thought of her reputed wealth, and expressed his wishes this second
+time pretty plainly.  To his surprise, the reply she made was in a
+series of smart strokes across his shoulders, administered through
+the medium of a supple hazel-switch.
+
+"Take that!" said she, almost breathless, "to teach thee how thou
+darest make a fool of an honest woman old enough to be thy mother.
+If thou com'st a step nearer the house, there's a good horse-pool,
+and there's two stout fellows who'll like no better fun than ducking
+thee.  Be off wi' thee!"
+
+And she strode into her own premises, never looking round to see
+whether he obeyed her injunction or not.
+
+Sometimes three or four years would pass over without her hearing
+Michael Hurst's name mentioned.  She used to wonder at such times
+whether he were dead or alive.  She would sit for hours by the dying
+embers of her fire on a winter's evening, trying to recall the scenes
+of her youth; trying to bring up living pictures of the faces she had
+then known--Michael's most especially.  She thought it was possible,
+so long had been the lapse of years, that she might now pass by him
+in the street unknowing and unknown.  His outward form she might not
+recognize, but himself she should feel in the thrill of her whole
+being.  He could not pass her unawares.
+
+What little she did hear about him, all testified a downward
+tendency.  He drank--not at stated times when there was no other work
+to be done, but continually, whether it was seed-time or harvest.
+His children were all ill at the same time; then one died, while the
+others recovered, but were poor sickly things.  No one dared to give
+Susan any direct intelligence of her former lover; many avoided all
+mention of his name in her presence; but a few spoke out either in
+indifference to, or ignorance of, those bygone days.  Susan heard
+every word, every whisper, every sound that related to him.  But her
+eye never changed, nor did a muscle of her face move.
+
+Late one November night she sat over her fire; not a human being
+besides herself in the house; none but she had ever slept there since
+Willie's death.  The farm-labourers had foddered the cattle and gone
+home hours before.  There were crickets chirping all round the warm
+hearth-stones; there was the clock ticking with the peculiar beat
+Susan had known from her childhood, and which then and ever since she
+had oddly associated within the idea of a mother and child talking
+together, one loud tick, and quick--a feeble, sharp one following.
+
+The day had been keen, and piercingly cold.  The whole lift of heaven
+seemed a dome of iron.  Black and frost-bound was the earth under the
+cruel east wind.  Now the wind had dropped, and as the darkness had
+gathered in, the weather-wise old labourers prophesied snow.  The
+sounds in the air arose again, as Susan sat still and silent.  They
+were of a different character to what they had been during the
+prevalence of the east wind.  Then they had been shrill and piping;
+now they were like low distant growling; not unmusical, but strangely
+threatening.  Susan went to the window, and drew aside the little
+curtain.  The whole world was white--the air was blinded with the
+swift and heavy fall of snow.  At present it came down straight, but
+Susan knew those distant sounds in the hollows and gulleys of the
+hills portended a driving wind and a more cruel storm.  She thought
+of her sheep; were they all folded? the new-born calf, was it bedded
+well?  Before the drifts were formed too deep for her to pass in and
+out--and by the morning she judged that they would be six or seven
+feet deep--she would go out and see after the comfort of her beasts.
+She took a lantern, and tied a shawl over her head, and went out into
+the open air.  She had tenderly provided for all her animals, and was
+returning, when, borne on the blast as if some spirit-cry--for it
+seemed to come rather down from the skies than from any creature
+standing on earth's level--she heard a voice of agony; she could not
+distinguish words; it seemed rather as if some bird of prey was being
+caught in the whirl of the icy wind, and torn and tortured by its
+violence.  Again up high above!  Susan put down her lantern, and
+shouted loud in return; it was an instinct, for if the creature were
+not human, which she had doubted but a moment before, what good could
+her responding cry do?  And her cry was seized on by the tyrannous
+wind, and borne farther away in the opposite direction to that from
+which the call of agony had proceeded.  Again she listened; no sound:
+then again it rang through space; and this time she was sure it was
+human.  She turned into the house, and heaped turf and wood on the
+fire, which, careless of her own sensations, she had allowed to fade
+and almost die out.  She put a new candle in her lantern; she changed
+her shawl for a maud, and leaving the door on latch, she sallied out.
+Just at the moment when her ear first encountered the weird noises of
+the storm, on issuing forth into the open air, she thought she heard
+the words, "O God!  O help!"  They were a guide to her, if words they
+were, for they came straight from a rock not a quarter of a mile from
+Yew Nook, but only to be reached, on account of its precipitous
+character, by a round-about path.  Thither she steered, defying wind
+and snow; guided by here a thorn-tree, there an old, doddered oak,
+which had not quite lest their identity under the whelming mask of
+snow.  Now and then she stopped to listen; but never a word or sound
+heard she, till right from where the copse-wood grew thick and
+tangled at the base of the rock, round which she was winding, she
+heard a moan.  Into the brake--all snow in appearance--almost a plain
+of snow looked on from the little eminence where she stood--she
+plunged, breaking down the bush, stumbling, bruising herself,
+fighting her way; her lantern held between her teeth, and she herself
+using head as well as hands to butt away a passage, at whatever cost
+of bodily injury.  As she climbed or staggered, owing to the
+unevenness of the snow-covered ground, where the briars and weeds of
+years were tangled and matted together, her foot felt something
+strangely soft and yielding.  She lowered her lantern; there lay a
+man, prone on his face, nearly covered by the fast-falling flakes; he
+must have fallen from the rock above, as, not knowing of the
+circuitous path, he had tried to descend its steep, slippery face.
+Who could tell? it was no time for thinking.  Susan lifted him up
+with her wiry strength; he gave no help--no sign of life; but for all
+that he might be alive:  he was still warm; she tied her maud round
+him; she fastened the lantern to her apron-string; she held him
+tight:  half-carrying, half-dragging--what did a few bruises signify
+to him, compared to dear life, to precious life!  She got him through
+the brake, and down the path.  There, for an instant, she stopped to
+take breath; but, as if stung by the Furies, she pushed on again with
+almost superhuman strength.  Clasping him round the waist, and
+leaning his dead weight against the lintel of the door, she tried to
+undo the latch; but now, just at this moment, a trembling faintness
+came over her, and a fearful dread took possession of her--that here,
+on the very threshold of her home, she might be found dead, and
+buried under the snow, when the farm-servants came in the morning.
+This terror stirred her up to one more effort.  Then she and her
+companion were in the warmth of the quiet haven of that kitchen; she
+laid him on the settle, and sank on the floor by his side.  How long
+she remained in this swoon she could not tell; not very long she
+judged by the fire, which was still red and sullenly glowing when she
+came to herself.  She lighted the candle, and bent over her late
+burden to ascertain if indeed he were dead.  She stood long gazing.
+The man lay dead.  There could be no doubt about it.  His filmy eyes
+glared at her, unshut.  But Susan was not one to be affrighted by the
+stony aspect of death.  It was not that; it was the bitter, woeful
+recognition of Michael Hurst!
+
+She was convinced he was dead; but after a while she refused to
+believe in her conviction.  She stripped off his wet outer-garments
+with trembling, hurried hands.  She brought a blanket down from her
+own bed; she made up the fire.  She swathed him in fresh, warm
+wrappings, and laid him on the flags before the fire, sitting herself
+at his head, and holding it in her lap, while she tenderly wiped his
+loose, wet hair, curly still, although its colour had changed from
+nut-brown to iron-gray since she had seen it last.  From time to time
+she bent over the face afresh, sick, and fain to believe that the
+flicker of the fire-light was some slight convulsive motion.  But the
+dim, staring eyes struck chill to her heart.  At last she ceased her
+delicate, busy cares:  but she still held the head softly, as if
+caressing it.  She thought over all the possibilities and chances in
+the mingled yarn of their lives that might, by so slight a turn, have
+ended far otherwise.  If her mother's cold had been early tended, so
+that the responsibility as to her brother's weal or woe had not
+fallen upon her; if the fever had not taken such rough, cruel hold on
+Will; nay, if Mrs. Gale, that hard, worldly sister, had not
+accompanied him on his last visit to Yew Nook--his very last before
+this fatal, stormy might; if she had heard his cry,--cry uttered by
+these pale, dead lips with such wild, despairing agony, not yet three
+hours ago!--O! if she had but heard it sooner, he might have been
+saved before that blind, false step had precipitated him down the
+rock!  In going over this weary chain of unrealized possibilities,
+Susan learnt the force of Peggy's words.  Life was short, looking
+back upon it.  It seemed but yesterday since all the love of her
+being had been poured out, and run to waste.  The intervening years--
+the long monotonous years that had turned her into an old woman
+before her time--were but a dream.
+
+The labourers coming in the dawn of the winter's day were surprised
+to see the fire-light through the low kitchen-window.  They knocked,
+and hearing a moaning answer, they entered, fearing that something
+had befallen their mistress.  For all explanation they got these
+words
+
+"It is Michael Hurst.  He was belated, and fell down the Raven's
+Crag.  Where does Eleanor, his wife, live?"
+
+How Michael Hurst got to Yew Nook no one but Susan ever knew.  They
+thought he had dragged himself there, with some sore internal bruise
+sapping away his minuted life.  They could not have believed the
+superhuman exertion which had first sought him out, and then dragged
+him hither.  Only Susan knew of that.
+
+She gave him into the charge of her servants, and went out and
+saddled her horse.  Where the wind had drifted the snow on one side,
+and the road was clear and bare, she rode, and rode fast; where the
+soft, deceitful heaps were massed up, she dismounted and led her
+steed, plunging in deep, with fierce energy, the pain at her heart
+urging her onwards with a sharp, digging spur.
+
+The gray, solemn, winter's noon was more night-like than the depth of
+summer's night; dim-purple brooded the low skies over the white
+earth, as Susan rode up to what had been Michael Hurst's abode while
+living.  It was a small farm-house carelessly kept outside,
+slatternly tended within.  The pretty Nelly Hebthwaite was pretty
+still; her delicate face had never suffered from any long-enduring
+feeling.  If anything, its expression was that of plaintive sorrow;
+but the soft, light hair had scarcely a tinge of gray; the wood-rose
+tint of complexion yet remained, if not so brilliant as in youth; the
+straight nose, the small mouth were untouched by time.  Susan felt
+the contrast even at that moment.  She knew that her own skin was
+weather-beaten, furrowed, brown,--that her teeth were gone, and her
+hair gray and ragged.  And yet she was not two years older than
+Nelly,--she had not been, in youth, when she took account of these
+things.  Nelly stood wondering at the strange-enough horse-woman, who
+stopped and panted at the door, holding her horse's bridle, and
+refusing to enter.
+
+"Where is Michael Hurst?" asked Susan, at last.
+
+"Well, I can't rightly say.  He should have been at home last night,
+but he was off, seeing after a public-house to be let at Ulverstone,
+for our farm does not answer, and we were thinking--"
+
+"He did not come home last night?" said Susan, cutting short the
+story, and half-affirming, half-questioning, by way of letting in a
+ray of the awful light before she let it full in, in its consuming
+wrath.
+
+"No! he'll be stopping somewhere out Ulverstone ways.  I'm sure we've
+need of him at home, for I've no one but lile Tommy to help me tend
+the beasts.  Things have not gone well with us, and we don't keep a
+servant now.  But you're trembling all over, ma'am.  You'd better
+come in, and take something warm, while your horse rests.  That's the
+stable-door, to your left."
+
+Susan took her horse there; loosened his girths, and rubbed him down
+with a wisp of straw.  Then she hooked about her for hay; but the
+place was bare of feed, and smelt damp and unused.  She went to the
+house, thankful for the respite, and got some clap-bread, which she
+mashed up in a pailful of lukewarm water.  Every moment was a
+respite, and yet every moment made her dread the more the task that
+lay before her.  It would be longer than she thought at first.  She
+took the saddle off, and hung about her horse, which seemed, somehow,
+more like a friend than anything else in the world.  She laid her
+cheek against its neck, and rested there, before returning to the
+house for the last time.
+
+Eleanor had brought down one of her own gowns, which hung on a chair
+against the fire, and had made her unknown visitor a cup of hot tea.
+Susan could hardly bear all these little attentions:  they choked
+her, and yet she was so wet, so weak with fatigue and excitement,
+that she could neither resist by voice or by action.  Two children
+stood awkwardly about, puzzled at the scene, and even Eleanor began
+to wish for some explanation of who her strange visitor was.
+
+"You've, maybe, heard him speaking of me?  I'm called Susan Dixon."
+
+Nelly coloured, and avoided meeting Susan's eye.
+
+"I've heard other folk speak of you.  He never named your name."
+
+This respect of silence came like balm to Susan:  balm not felt or
+heeded at the time it was applied, but very grateful in its effects
+for all that.
+
+"He is at my house," continued Susan, determined not to stop or
+quaver in the operation--the pain which must be inflicted.
+
+"At your house?  Yew Nook?" questioned Eleanor, surprised.  "How came
+he there?"--half jealously.  "Did he take shelter from the coming
+storm?  Tell me,--there is something--tell me, woman!"
+
+"He took no shelter.  Would to God he had!"
+
+"O! would to God! would to God!" shrieked out Eleanor, learning all
+from the woful import of those dreary eyes.  Her cries thrilled
+through the house; the children's piping wailings and passionate
+cries on "Daddy!  Daddy!" pierced into Susan's very marrow.  But she
+remained as still and tearless as the great round face upon the
+clock.
+
+At last, in a lull of crying, she said,--not exactly questioning, but
+as if partly to herself -
+
+"You loved him, then?"
+
+"Loved him! he was my husband!  He was the father of three bonny
+bairns that lie dead in Grasmere churchyard.  I wish you'd go, Susan
+Dixon, and let me weep without your watching me!  I wish you'd never
+come near the place."
+
+"Alas! alas! it would not have brought him to life.  I would have
+laid down my own to save his.  My life has been so very sad!  No one
+would have cared if I had died.  Alas! alas!"
+
+The tone in which she said this was so utterly mournful and
+despairing that it awed Nelly into quiet for a time.  But by-and-by
+she said, "I would not turn a dog out to do it harm; but the night is
+clear, and Tommy shall guide you to the Red Cow.  But, oh, I want to
+be alone!  If you'll come back to-morrow, I'll be better, and I'll
+hear all, and thank you for every kindness you have shown him,--and I
+do believe you've showed him kindness,--though I don't know why."
+
+Susan moved heavily and strangely.
+
+She said something--her words came thick and unintelligible.  She had
+had a paralytic stroke since she had last spoken.  She could not go,
+even if she would.  Nor did Eleanor, when she became aware of the
+state of the case, wish her to leave.  She had her laid on her own
+bed, and weeping silently all the while for her lest husband, she
+nursed Susan like a sister.  She did not know what her guest's
+worldly position might be; and she might never be repaid.  But she
+sold many a little trifle to purchase such small comforts as Susan
+needed.  Susan, lying still and motionless, learnt much.  It was not
+a severe stroke; it might be the forerunner of others yet to come,
+but at some distance of time.  But for the present she recovered, and
+regained much of her former health.  On her sick-bed she matured her
+plans.  When she returned to Yew Nook, she took Michael Hurst's widow
+and children with her to live there, and fill up the haunted hearth
+with living forms that should banish the ghosts.
+
+And so it fell out that the latter days of Susan Dixon's life were
+better than the former.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext Half a Life-Time Ago, by Elizabeth Gaskell
+
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