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+Project Gutenberg Etext Half a Life-Time Ago, by Elizabeth Gaskell
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+Title:  Half a Life-Time Ago
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+Author:  Elizabeth Gaskell
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+March, 2001  [Etext #2547]
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+Project Gutenberg Etext Half a Life-Time Ago, by Elizabeth Gaskell
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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.
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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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