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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Half a Life-time Ago, by Elizabeth Gaskell
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Half a Life-time Ago
+
+Author: Elizabeth Gaskell
+
+Release Date: April 21, 2000 [eBook #2547]
+[Most recently updated: April 20, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: David Price
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HALF A LIFE-TIME AGO ***
+
+
+
+
+Half a Life-time Ago
+
+by Elizabeth Gaskell
+
+
+Contents
+
+ CHAPTER I.
+ CHAPTER II.
+ CHAPTER III.
+ CHAPTER IV.
+ CHAPTER V.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+Half a life-time ago, there lived in one of the Westmoreland dales a
+single woman, of the name of Susan Dixon. She was owner of the small
+farm-house where she resided, and of some thirty or forty acres of land
+by which it was surrounded. She had also an hereditary right to a
+sheep-walk, extending to the wild fells that overhang Blea Tarn. In the
+language of the country she was a Stateswoman. Her house is yet to be
+seen on the Oxenfell road, between Skelwith and Coniston. You go along
+a moorland track, made by the carts that occasionally came for turf
+from the Oxenfell. A brook babbles and brattles by the wayside, giving
+you a sense of companionship, which relieves the deep solitude in which
+this way is usually traversed. Some miles on this side of Coniston
+there is a farmstead—a gray stone house, and a square of farm-buildings
+surrounding a green space of rough turf, in the midst of which stands a
+mighty, funereal umbrageous yew, making a solemn shadow, as of death,
+in the very heart and centre of the light and heat of the brightest
+summer day. On the side away from the house, this yard slopes down to a
+dark-brown pool, which is supplied with fresh water from the
+overflowings of a stone cistern, into which some rivulet of the brook
+before-mentioned continually and melodiously falls bubbling. The cattle
+drink out of this cistern. The household bring their pitchers and fill
+them with drinking-water by a dilatory, yet pretty, process. The
+water-carrier brings with her a leaf of the hound’s-tongue fern, and,
+inserting it in the crevice of the gray rock, makes a cool, green spout
+for the sparkling stream.
+
+The house is no specimen, at the present day, of what it was in the
+lifetime of Susan Dixon. Then, every small diamond pane in the windows
+glittered with cleanliness. You might have eaten off the floor; you
+could see yourself in the pewter plates and the polished oaken awmry,
+or dresser, of the state kitchen into which you entered. Few strangers
+penetrated further than this room. Once or twice, wandering tourists,
+attracted by the lonely picturesqueness of the situation, and the
+exquisite cleanliness of the house itself, made their way into this
+house-place, and offered money enough (as they thought) to tempt the
+hostess to receive them as lodgers. They would give no trouble, they
+said; they would be out rambling or sketching all day long; would be
+perfectly content with a share of the food which she provided for
+herself; or would procure what they required from the Waterhead Inn at
+Coniston. But no liberal sum—no fair words—moved her from her stony
+manner, or her monotonous tone of indifferent refusal. No persuasion
+could induce her to show any more of the house than that first room; no
+appearance of fatigue procured for the weary an invitation to sit down
+and rest; and if one more bold and less delicate did so without being
+asked, Susan stood by, cold and apparently deaf, or only replying by
+the briefest monosyllables, till the unwelcome visitor had departed.
+Yet those with whom she had dealings, in the way of selling her cattle
+or her farm produce, spoke of her as keen after a bargain—a hard one to
+have to do with; and she never spared herself exertion or fatigue, at
+market or in the field, to make the most of her produce. She led the
+hay-makers with her swift, steady rake, and her noiseless evenness of
+motion. She was about among the earliest in the market, examining
+samples of oats, pricing them, and then turning with grim satisfaction
+to her own cleaner corn.
+
+She was served faithfully and long by those who were rather her
+fellow-labourers than her servants. She was even and just in her
+dealings with them. If she was peculiar and silent, they knew her, and
+knew that she might be relied on. Some of them had known her from her
+childhood; and deep in their hearts was an unspoken—almost
+unconscious—pity for her, for they knew her story, though they never
+spoke of it.
+
+Yes; the time had been when that tall, gaunt, hard-featured, angular
+woman—who never smiled, and hardly ever spoke an unnecessary word—had
+been a fine-looking girl, bright-spirited and rosy; and when the hearth
+at the Yew Nook had been as bright as she, with family love and
+youthful hope and mirth. Fifty or fifty-one years ago, William Dixon
+and his wife Margaret were alive; and Susan, their daughter, was about
+eighteen years old—ten years older than the only other child, a boy
+named after his father. William and Margaret Dixon were rather superior
+people, of a character belonging—as far as I have seen—exclusively to
+the class of Westmoreland and Cumberland statesmen—just, independent,
+upright; not given to much speaking; kind-hearted, but not
+demonstrative; disliking change, and new ways, and new people; sensible
+and shrewd; each household self-contained, and its members having
+little curiosity as to their neighbours, with whom they rarely met for
+any social intercourse, save at the stated times of sheep-shearing and
+Christmas; having a certain kind of sober pleasure in amassing money,
+which occasionally made them miserable (as they call miserly people up
+in the north) in their old age; reading no light or ephemeral
+literature, but the grave, solid books brought round by the pedlars
+(such as the “Paradise Lost” and “Regained,’” “The Death of Abel,” “The
+Spiritual Quixote,” and “The Pilgrim’s Progress”), were to be found in
+nearly every house: the men occasionally going off laking, _i.e._
+playing, _i.e._ drinking for days together, and having to be hunted up
+by anxious wives, who dared not leave their husbands to the chances of
+the wild precipitous roads, but walked miles and miles, lantern in
+hand, in the dead of night, to discover and guide the solemnly-drunken
+husband home; who had a dreadful headache the next day, and the day
+after that came forth as grave, and sober, and virtuous looking as if
+there were no such thing as malt and spirituous liquors in the world;
+and who were seldom reminded of their misdoings by their wives, to whom
+such occasional outbreaks were as things of course, when once the
+immediate anxiety produced by them was over. Such were—such are—the
+characteristics of a class now passing away from the face of the land,
+as their compeers, the yeomen, have done before them. Of such was
+William Dixon. He was a shrewd clever farmer, in his day and
+generation, when shrewdness was rather shown in the breeding and
+rearing of sheep and cattle than in the cultivation of land. Owing to
+this character of his, statesmen from a distance from beyond Kendal, or
+from Borrowdale, of greater wealth than he, would send their sons to be
+farm-servants for a year or two with him, in order to learn some of his
+methods before setting up on land of their own. When Susan, his
+daughter, was about seventeen, one Michael Hurst was farm-servant at
+Yew Nook. He worked with the master, and lived with the family, and was
+in all respects treated as an equal, except in the field. His father
+was a wealthy statesman at Wythburne, up beyond Grasmere; and through
+Michael’s servitude the families had become acquainted, and the Dixons
+went over to the High Beck sheep-shearing, and the Hursts came down by
+Red Bank and Loughrig Tarn and across the Oxenfell when there was the
+Christmas-tide feasting at Yew Nook. The fathers strolled round the
+fields together, examined cattle and sheep, and looked knowing over
+each other’s horses. The mothers inspected the dairies and household
+arrangements, each openly admiring the plans of the other, but secretly
+preferring their own. Both fathers and mothers cast a glance from time
+to time at Michael and Susan, who were thinking of nothing less than
+farm or dairy, but whose unspoken attachment was, in all ways, so
+suitable and natural a thing that each parent rejoiced over it,
+although with characteristic reserve it was never spoken about—not even
+between husband and wife.
+
+Susan had been a strong, independent, healthy girl; a clever help to
+her mother, and a spirited companion to her father; more of a man in
+her (as he often said) than her delicate little brother ever would
+have. He was his mother’s darling, although she loved Susan well. There
+was no positive engagement between Michael and Susan—I doubt whether
+even plain words of love had been spoken; when one winter-time Margaret
+Dixon was seized with inflammation consequent upon a neglected cold.
+She had always been strong and notable, and had been too busy to attend
+to the early symptoms of illness. It would go off, she said to the
+woman who helped in the kitchen; or if she did not feel better when
+they had got the hams and bacon out of hand, she would take some
+herb-tea and nurse up a bit. But Death could not wait till the hams and
+bacon were cured: he came on with rapid strides, and shooting arrows of
+portentous agony. Susan had never seen illness—never knew how much she
+loved her mother till now, when she felt a dreadful, instinctive
+certainty that she was losing her. Her mind was thronged with
+recollections of the many times she had slighted her mother’s wishes;
+her heart was full of the echoes of careless and angry replies that she
+had spoken. What would she not now give to have opportunities of
+service and obedience, and trials of her patience and love, for that
+dear mother who lay gasping in torture! And yet Susan had been a good
+girl and an affectionate daughter.
+
+The sharp pain went off, and delicious ease came on; yet still her
+mother sunk. In the midst of this languid peace she was dying. She
+motioned Susan to her bedside, for she could only whisper; and then,
+while the father was out of the room, she spoke as much to the eager,
+hungering eyes of her daughter by the motion of her lips, as by the
+slow, feeble sounds of her voice.
+
+“Susan, lass, thou must not fret. It is God’s will, and thou wilt have
+a deal to do. Keep father straight if thou canst; and if he goes out
+Ulverstone ways, see that thou meet him before he gets to the Old
+Quarry. It’s a dree bit for a man who has had a drop. As for lile
+Will”—Here the poor woman’s face began to work and her fingers to move
+nervously as they lay on the bed-quilt—“lile Will will miss me most of
+all. Father’s often vexed with him because he’s not a quick strong lad;
+he is not, my poor lile chap. And father thinks he’s saucy, because he
+cannot always stomach oat-cake and porridge. There’s better than three
+pound in th’ old black tea-pot on the top shelf of the cupboard. Just
+keep a piece of loaf-bread by you, Susan dear, for Will to come to when
+he’s not taken his breakfast. I have, may be, spoilt him; but there’ll
+be no one to spoil him now.”
+
+She began to cry a low, feeble cry, and covered up her face that Susan
+might not see her. That dear face! those precious moments while yet the
+eyes could look out with love and intelligence. Susan laid her head
+down close by her mother’s ear.
+
+“Mother I’ll take tent of Will. Mother, do you hear? He shall not want
+ought I can give or get for him, least of all the kind words which you
+had ever ready for us both. Bless you! bless you! my own mother.”
+
+“Thou’lt promise me that, Susan, wilt thou? I can die easy if thou’lt
+take charge of him. But he’s hardly like other folk; he tries father at
+times, though I think father’ll be tender of him when I’m gone, for my
+sake. And, Susan, there’s one thing more. I never spoke on it for fear
+of the bairn being called a tell-tale, but I just comforted him up. He
+vexes Michael at times, and Michael has struck him before now. I did
+not want to make a stir; but he’s not strong, and a word from thee,
+Susan, will go a long way with Michael.”
+
+Susan was as red now as she had been pale before; it was the first time
+that her influence over Michael had been openly acknowledged by a third
+person, and a flash of joy came athwart the solemn sadness of the
+moment. Her mother had spoken too much, and now came on the miserable
+faintness. She never spoke again coherently; but when her children and
+her husband stood by her bedside, she took lile Will’s hand and put it
+into Susan’s, and looked at her with imploring eyes. Susan clasped her
+arms round Will, and leaned her head upon his little curly one, and
+vowed within herself to be as a mother to him.
+
+Henceforward she was all in all to her brother. She was a more spirited
+and amusing companion to him than his mother had been, from her greater
+activity, and perhaps, also, from her originality of character, which
+often prompted her to perform her habitual actions in some new and racy
+manner. She was tender to lile Will when she was prompt and sharp with
+everybody else—with Michael most of all; for somehow the girl felt
+that, unprotected by her mother, she must keep up her own dignity, and
+not allow her lover to see how strong a hold he had upon her heart. He
+called her hard and cruel, and left her so; and she smiled softly to
+herself, when his back was turned, to think how little he guessed how
+deeply he was loved. For Susan was merely comely and fine looking;
+Michael was strikingly handsome, admired by all the girls for miles
+round, and quite enough of a country coxcomb to know it and plume
+himself accordingly. He was the second son of his father; the eldest
+would have High Beck farm, of course, but there was a good penny in the
+Kendal bank in store for Michael. When harvest was over, he went to
+Chapel Langdale to learn to dance; and at night, in his merry moods, he
+would do his steps on the flag floor of the Yew Nook kitchen, to the
+secret admiration of Susan, who had never learned dancing, but who
+flouted him perpetually, even while she admired, in accordance with the
+rule she seemed to have made for herself about keeping him at a
+distance so long as he lived under the same roof with her. One evening
+he sulked at some saucy remark of hers; he sitting in the chimney
+corner with his arms on his knees, and his head bent forwards, lazily
+gazing into the wood-fire on the hearth, and luxuriating in rest after
+a hard day’s labour; she sitting among the geraniums on the long, low
+window-seat, trying to catch the last slanting rays of the autumnal
+light to enable her to finish stitching a shirt-collar for Will, who
+lounged full length on the flags at the other side of the hearth to
+Michael, poking the burning wood from time to time with a long
+hazel-stick to bring out the leap of glittering sparks.
+
+“And if you can dance a threesome reel, what good does it do ye?” asked
+Susan, looking askance at Michael, who had just been vaunting his
+proficiency. “Does it help you plough, reap, or even climb the rocks to
+take a raven’s nest? If I were a man, I’d be ashamed to give in to such
+softness.”
+
+“If you were a man, you’d be glad to do anything which made the pretty
+girls stand round and admire.”
+
+“As they do to you, eh! Ho, Michael, that would not be my way o’ being
+a man!”
+
+“What would then?” asked he, after a pause, during which he had
+expected in vain that she would go on with her sentence. No answer.
+
+“I should not like you as a man, Susy; you’d be too hard and
+headstrong.”
+
+“Am I hard and headstrong?” asked she, with as indifferent a tone as
+she could assume, but which yet had a touch of pique in it. His quick
+ear detected the inflexion.
+
+“No, Susy! You’re wilful at times, and that’s right enough. I don’t
+like a girl without spirit. There’s a mighty pretty girl comes to the
+dancing class; but she is all milk and water. Her eyes never flash like
+yours when you’re put out; why, I can see them flame across the kitchen
+like a cat’s in the dark. Now, if you were a man, I should feel queer
+before those looks of yours; as it is, I rather like them, because—”
+
+“Because what?” asked she, looking up and perceiving that he had stolen
+close up to her.
+
+“Because I can make all right in this way,” said he, kissing her
+suddenly.
+
+“Can you?” said she, wrenching herself out of his grasp and panting,
+half with rage. “Take that, by way of proof that making right is none
+so easy.” And she boxed his ears pretty sharply. He went back to his
+seat discomfited and out of temper. She could no longer see to look,
+even if her face had not burnt and her eyes dazzled, but she did not
+choose to move her seat, so she still preserved her stooping attitude
+and pretended to go on sewing.
+
+“Eleanor Hebthwaite may be milk-and-water,” muttered he, “but—Confound
+thee, lad! what art thou doing?” exclaimed Michael, as a great piece of
+burning wood was cast into his face by an unlucky poke of Will’s. “Thou
+great lounging, clumsy chap, I’ll teach thee better!” and with one or
+two good round kicks he sent the lad whimpering away into the
+back-kitchen. When he had a little recovered himself from his passion,
+he saw Susan standing before him, her face looking strange and almost
+ghastly by the reversed position of the shadows, arising from the
+firelight shining upwards right under it.
+
+“I tell thee what, Michael,” said she, “that lad’s motherless, but not
+friendless.”
+
+“His own father leathers him, and why should not I, when he’s given me
+such a burn on my face?” said Michael, putting up his hand to his cheek
+as if in pain.
+
+“His father’s his father, and there is nought more to be said. But if
+he did burn thee, it was by accident, and not o’ purpose; as thou
+kicked him, it’s a mercy if his ribs are not broken.”
+
+“He howls loud enough, I’m sure. I might ha’ kicked many a lad twice as
+hard, and they’d ne’er ha’ said ought but ‘damn ye;’ but yon lad must
+needs cry out like a stuck pig if one touches him;” replied Michael,
+sullenly.
+
+Susan went back to the window-seat, and looked absently out of the
+window at the drifting clouds for a minute or two, while her eyes
+filled with tears. Then she got up and made for the outer door which
+led into the back-kitchen. Before she reached it, however, she heard a
+low voice, whose music made her thrill, say—
+
+“Susan, Susan!”
+
+Her heart melted within her, but it seemed like treachery to her poor
+boy, like faithlessness to her dead mother, to turn to her lover while
+the tears which he had caused to flow were yet unwiped on Will’s
+cheeks. So she seemed to take no heed, but passed into the darkness,
+and, guided by the sobs, she found her way to where Willie sat crouched
+among the disused tubs and churns.
+
+“Come out wi’ me, lad;” and they went out into the orchard, where the
+fruit-trees were bare of leaves, but ghastly in their tattered covering
+of gray moss: and the soughing November wind came with long sweeps over
+the fells till it rattled among the crackling boughs, underneath which
+the brother and sister sat in the dark; he in her lap, and she hushing
+his head against her shoulder.
+
+“Thou should’st na’ play wi’ fire. It’s a naughty trick. Thoul’t suffer
+for it in worse ways nor this before thou’st done, I’m afeared. I
+should ha’ hit thee twice as lungeous kicks as Mike, if I’d been in his
+place. He did na’ hurt thee, I am sure,” she assumed, half as a
+question.
+
+“Yes but he did. He turned me quite sick.” And he let his head fall
+languidly down on his sister’s breast.
+
+“Come, lad! come, lad!” said she anxiously. “Be a man. It was not much
+that I saw. Why, when first the red cow came she kicked me far harder
+for offering to milk her before her legs were tied. See thee! here’s a
+peppermint-drop, and I’ll make thee a pasty to-night; only don’t give
+way so, for it hurts me sore to think that Michael has done thee any
+harm, my pretty.”
+
+Willie roused himself up, and put back the wet and ruffled hair from
+his heated face; and he and Susan rose up, and hand-in-hand went
+towards the house, walking slowly and quietly except for a kind of sob
+which Willie could not repress. Susan took him to the pump and washed
+his tear-stained face, till she thought she had obliterated all traces
+of the recent disturbance, arranging his curls for him, and then she
+kissed him tenderly, and led him in, hoping to find Michael in the
+kitchen, and make all straight between them. But the blaze had dropped
+down into darkness; the wood was a heap of gray ashes in which the
+sparks ran hither and thither; but even in the groping darkness Susan
+knew by the sinking at her heart that Michael was not there. She threw
+another brand on the hearth and lighted the candle, and sat down to her
+work in silence. Willie cowered on his stool by the side of the fire,
+eyeing his sister from time to time, and sorry and oppressed, he knew
+not why, by the sight of her grave, almost stern face. No one came.
+They two were in the house alone. The old woman who helped Susan with
+the household work had gone out for the night to some friend’s
+dwelling. William Dixon, the father, was up on the fells seeing after
+his sheep. Susan had no heart to prepare the evening meal.
+
+“Susy, darling, are you angry with me?” said Willie, in his little
+piping, gentle voice. He had stolen up to his sister’s side. “I won’t
+never play with the fire again; and I’ll not cry if Michael does kick
+me. Only don’t look so like dead mother—don’t—don’t—please don’t!” he
+exclaimed, hiding his face on her shoulder.
+
+“I’m not angry, Willie,” said she. “Don’t be feared on me. You want
+your supper, and you shall have it; and don’t you be feared on Michael.
+He shall give reason for every hair of your head that he touches—he
+shall.”
+
+When William Dixon came home he found Susan and Willie sitting
+together, hand-in-hand, and apparently pretty cheerful. He bade them go
+to bed, for that he would sit up for Michael; and the next morning,
+when Susan came down, she found that Michael had started an hour before
+with the cart for lime. It was a long day’s work; Susan knew it would
+be late, perhaps later than on the preceding night, before he
+returned—at any rate, past her usual bed-time; and on no account would
+she stop up a minute beyond that hour in the kitchen, whatever she
+might do in her bed-room. Here she sat and watched till past midnight;
+and when she saw him coming up the brow with the carts, she knew full
+well, even in that faint moonlight, that his gait was the gait of a man
+in liquor. But though she was annoyed and mortified to find in what way
+he had chosen to forget her, the fact did not disgust or shock her as
+it would have done many a girl, even at that day, who had not been
+brought up as Susan had, among a class who considered it no crime, but
+rather a mark of spirit, in a man to get drunk occasionally.
+Nevertheless, she chose to hold herself very high all the next day when
+Michael was, perforce, obliged to give up any attempt to do heavy work,
+and hung about the out-buildings and farm in a very disconsolate and
+sickly state. Willie had far more pity on him than Susan. Before
+evening, Willie and he were fast, and, on his side, ostentatious
+friends. Willie rode the horses down to water; Willie helped him to
+chop wood. Susan sat gloomily at her work, hearing an indistinct but
+cheerful conversation going on in the shippon, while the cows were
+being milked. She almost felt irritated with her little brother, as if
+he were a traitor, and had gone over to the enemy in the very battle
+that she was fighting in his cause. She was alone with no one to speak
+to, while they prattled on regardless if she were glad or sorry.
+
+Soon Willie burst in. “Susan! Susan! come with me; I’ve something so
+pretty to show you. Round the corner of the barn—run! run!” (He was
+dragging her along, half reluctant, half desirous of some change in
+that weary day.) Round the corner of the barn; and caught hold of by
+Michael, who stood there awaiting her.
+
+“O Willie!” cried she “you naughty boy. There is nothing pretty—what
+have you brought me here for? Let me go; I won’t be held.”
+
+“Only one word. Nay, if you wish it so much, you may go,” said Michael,
+suddenly loosing his hold as she struggled. But now she was free, she
+only drew off a step or two, murmuring something about Willie.
+
+“You are going, then?” said Michael, with seeming sadness. “You won’t
+hear me say a word of what is in my heart.”
+
+“How can I tell whether it is what I should like to hear?” replied she,
+still drawing back.
+
+“That is just what I want you to tell me; I want you to hear it and
+then to tell me whether you like it or not.”
+
+“Well, you may speak,” replied she, turning her back, and beginning to
+plait the hem of her apron.
+
+He came close to her ear.
+
+“I’m sorry I hurt Willie the other night. He has forgiven me. Can you?”
+
+“You hurt him very badly,” she replied. “But you are right to be sorry.
+I forgive you.”
+
+“Stop, stop!” said he, laying his hand upon her arm. “There is
+something more I’ve got to say. I want you to be my—what is it they
+call it, Susan?”
+
+“I don’t know,” said she, half-laughing, but trying to get away with
+all her might now; and she was a strong girl, but she could not manage
+it.
+
+“You do. My—what is it I want you to be?”
+
+“I tell you I don’t know, and you had best be quiet, and just let me go
+in, or I shall think you’re as bad now as you were last night.”
+
+“And how did you know what I was last night? It was past twelve when I
+came home. Were you watching? Ah, Susan! be my wife, and you shall
+never have to watch for a drunken husband. If I were your husband, I
+would come straight home, and count every minute an hour till I saw
+your bonny face. Now you know what I want you to be. I ask you to be my
+wife. Will you, my own dear Susan?”
+
+She did not speak for some time. Then she only said “Ask father.” And
+now she was really off like a lapwing round the corner of the barn, and
+up in her own little room, crying with all her might, before the
+triumphant smile had left Michael’s face where he stood.
+
+The “Ask father” was a mere form to be gone though. Old Daniel Hurst
+and William Dixon had talked over what they could respectively give
+their children before this; and that was the parental way of arranging
+such matters. When the probable amount of worldly gear that he could
+give his child had been named by each father, the young folk, as they
+said, might take their own time in coming to the point which the old
+men, with the prescience of experience, saw they were drifting to; no
+need to hurry them, for they were both young, and Michael, though
+active enough, was too thoughtless, old Daniel said, to be trusted with
+the entire management of a farm. Meanwhile, his father would look about
+him, and see after all the farms that were to be let.
+
+Michael had a shrewd notion of this preliminary understanding between
+the fathers, and so felt less daunted than he might otherwise have done
+at making the application for Susan’s hand. It was all right, there was
+not an obstacle; only a deal of good advice, which the lover thought
+might have as well been spared, and which it must be confessed he did
+not much attend to, although he assented to every part of it. Then
+Susan was called down stairs, and slowly came dropping into view down
+the steps which led from the two family apartments into the
+house-place. She tried to look composed and quiet, but it could not be
+done. She stood side by side with her lover, with her head drooping,
+her cheeks burning, not daring to look up or move, while her father
+made the newly-betrothed a somewhat formal address in which he gave his
+consent, and many a piece of worldly wisdom beside. Susan listened as
+well as she could for the beating of her heart; but when her father
+solemnly and sadly referred to his own lost wife, she could keep from
+sobbing no longer; but throwing her apron over her face, she sat down
+on the bench by the dresser, and fairly gave way to pent-up tears. Oh,
+how strangely sweet to be comforted as she was comforted, by tender
+caress, and many a low-whispered promise of love! Her father sat by the
+fire, thinking of the days that were gone; Willie was still out of
+doors; but Susan and Michael felt no one’s presence or absence—they
+only knew they were together as betrothed husband and wife.
+
+In a week, or two, they were formally told of the arrangements to be
+made in their favour. A small farm in the neighbourhood happened to
+fall vacant; and Michael’s father offered to take it for him, and be
+responsible for the rent for the first year, while William Dixon was to
+contribute a certain amount of stock, and both fathers were to help
+towards the furnishing of the house. Susan received all this
+information in a quiet, indifferent way; she did not care much for any
+of these preparations, which were to hurry her through the happy hours;
+she cared least of all for the money amount of dowry and of substance.
+It jarred on her to be made the confidante of occasional slight
+repinings of Michael’s, as one by one his future father-in-law set
+aside a beast or a pig for Susan’s portion, which were not always the
+best animals of their kind upon the farm. But he also complained of his
+own father’s stinginess, which somewhat, though not much, alleviated
+Susan’s dislike to being awakened out of her pure dream of love to the
+consideration of worldly wealth.
+
+But in the midst of all this bustle, Willie moped and pined. He had the
+same chord of delicacy running through his mind that made his body
+feeble and weak. He kept out of the way, and was apparently occupied in
+whittling and carving uncouth heads on hazel-sticks in an out-house.
+But he positively avoided Michael, and shrunk away even from Susan. She
+was too much occupied to notice this at first. Michael pointed it out
+to her, saying, with a laugh,—
+
+“Look at Willie! he might be a cast-off lover and jealous of me, he
+looks so dark and downcast at me.” Michael spoke this jest out loud,
+and Willie burst into tears, and ran out of the house.
+
+“Let me go. Let me go!” said Susan (for her lover’s arm was round her
+waist). “I must go to him if he’s fretting. I promised mother I would!”
+She pulled herself away, and went in search of the boy. She sought in
+byre and barn, through the orchard, where indeed in this leafless
+winter-time there was no great concealment; up into the room where the
+wool was usually stored in the later summer, and at last she found him,
+sitting at bay, like some hunted creature, up behind the wood-stack.
+
+“What are ye gone for, lad, and me seeking you everywhere?” asked she,
+breathless.
+
+“I did not know you would seek me. I’ve been away many a time, and no
+one has cared to seek me,” said he, crying afresh.
+
+“Nonsense,” replied Susan, “don’t be so foolish, ye little
+good-for-nought.” But she crept up to him in the hole he had made
+underneath the great, brown sheafs of wood, and squeezed herself down
+by him. “What for should folk seek after you, when you get away from
+them whenever you can?” asked she.
+
+“They don’t want me to stay. Nobody wants me. If I go with father, he
+says I hinder more than I help. You used to like to have me with you.
+But now, you’ve taken up with Michael, and you’d rather I was away; and
+I can just bide away; but I cannot stand Michael jeering at me. He’s
+got you to love him and that might serve him.”
+
+“But I love you, too, dearly, lad!” said she, putting her arm round his
+neck.
+
+“Which one of us do you like best?” said he, wistfully, after a little
+pause, putting her arm away, so that he might look in her face, and see
+if she spoke truth.
+
+She went very red.
+
+“You should not ask such questions. They are not fit for you to ask,
+nor for me to answer.”
+
+“But mother bade you love me!” said he, plaintively.
+
+“And so I do. And so I ever will do. Lover nor husband shall come
+betwixt thee and me, lad—ne’er a one of them. That I promise thee (as I
+promised mother before), in the sight of God and with her hearkening
+now, if ever she can hearken to earthly word again. Only I cannot abide
+to have thee fretting, just because my heart is large enough for two.”
+
+“And thou’lt love me always?”
+
+“Always, and ever. And the more—the more thou’lt love Michael,” said
+she, dropping her voice.
+
+“I’ll try,” said the boy, sighing, for he remembered many a harsh word
+and blow of which his sister knew nothing. She would have risen up to
+go away, but he held her tight, for here and now she was all his own,
+and he did not know when such a time might come again. So the two sat
+crouched up and silent, till they heard the horn blowing at the
+field-gate, which was the summons home to any wanderers belonging to
+the farm, and at this hour of the evening, signified that supper was
+ready. Then the two went in.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+Susan and Michael were to be married in April. He had already gone to
+take possession of his new farm, three or four miles away from Yew
+Nook—but that is neighbouring, according to the acceptation of the word
+in that thinly-populated district,—when William Dixon fell ill. He came
+home one evening, complaining of head-ache and pains in his limbs, but
+seemed to loathe the posset which Susan prepared for him; the
+treacle-posset which was the homely country remedy against an incipient
+cold. He took to his bed with a sensation of exceeding weariness, and
+an odd, unusual looking-back to the days of his youth, when he was a
+lad living with his parents, in this very house.
+
+The next morning he had forgotten all his life since then, and did not
+know his own children; crying, like a newly-weaned baby, for his mother
+to come and soothe away his terrible pain. The doctor from Coniston
+said it was the typhus-fever, and warned Susan of its infectious
+character, and shook his head over his patient. There were no near
+friends to come and share her anxiety; only good, kind old Peggy, who
+was faithfulness itself, and one or two labourers’ wives, who would
+fain have helped her, had not their hands been tied by their
+responsibility to their own families. But, somehow, Susan neither
+feared nor flagged. As for fear, indeed, she had no time to give way to
+it, for every energy of both body and mind was required. Besides, the
+young have had too little experience of the danger of infection to
+dread it much. She did indeed wish, from time to time, that Michael had
+been at home to have taken Willie over to his father’s at High Beck;
+but then, again, the lad was docile and useful to her, and his
+fecklessness in many things might make him harshly treated by
+strangers; so, perhaps, it was as well that Michael was away at Appleby
+fair, or even beyond that—gone into Yorkshire after horses.
+
+Her father grew worse; and the doctor insisted on sending over a nurse
+from Coniston. Not a professed nurse—Coniston could not have supported
+such a one; but a widow who was ready to go where the doctor sent her
+for the sake of the payment. When she came, Susan suddenly gave way;
+she was felled by the fever herself, and lay unconscious for long
+weeks. Her consciousness returned to her one spring afternoon; early
+spring: April,—her wedding-month. There was a little fire burning in
+the small corner-grate, and the flickering of the blaze was enough for
+her to notice in her weak state. She felt that there was some one
+sitting on the window-side of her bed, behind the curtain, but she did
+not care to know who it was; it was even too great a trouble for her
+languid mind to consider who it was likely to be. She would rather shut
+her eyes, and melt off again into the gentle luxury of sleep. The next
+time she wakened, the Coniston nurse perceived her movement, and made
+her a cup of tea, which she drank with eager relish; but still they did
+not speak, and once more Susan lay motionless—not asleep, but
+strangely, pleasantly conscious of all the small chamber and household
+sounds; the fall of a cinder on the hearth, the fitful singing of the
+half-empty kettle, the cattle tramping out to field again after they
+had been milked, the aged step on the creaking stair—old Peggy’s, as
+she knew. It came to her door; it stopped; the person outside listened
+for a moment, and then lifted the wooden latch, and looked in. The
+watcher by the bedside arose, and went to her. Susan would have been
+glad to see Peggy’s face once more, but was far too weak to turn, so
+she lay and listened.
+
+“How is she?” whispered one trembling, aged voice.
+
+“Better,” replied the other. “She’s been awake, and had a cup of tea.
+She’ll do now.”
+
+“Has she asked after him?”
+
+“Hush! No; she has not spoken a word.”
+
+“Poor lass! poor lass!”
+
+The door was shut. A weak feeling of sorrow and self-pity came over
+Susan. What was wrong? Whom had she loved? And dawning, dawning, slowly
+rose the sun of her former life, and all particulars were made distinct
+to her. She felt that some sorrow was coming to her, and cried over it
+before she knew what it was, or had strength enough to ask. In the dead
+of night,—and she had never slept again,—she softly called to the
+watcher, and asked—
+
+“Who?”
+
+“Who what?” replied the woman, with a conscious affright, ill-veiled by
+a poor assumption of ease. “Lie still, there’s a darling, and go to
+sleep. Sleep’s better for you than all the doctor’s stuff.”
+
+“Who?” repeated Susan. “Something is wrong. Who?”
+
+“Oh, dear!” said the woman. “There’s nothing wrong. Willie has taken
+the turn, and is doing nicely.”
+
+“Father?”
+
+“Well! he’s all right now,” she answered, looking another way, as if
+seeking for something.
+
+“Then it’s Michael! Oh, me! oh, me!” She set up a succession of weak,
+plaintive, hysterical cries before the nurse could pacify her, by
+declaring that Michael had been at the house not three hours before to
+ask after her, and looked as well and as hearty as ever man did.
+
+“And you heard of no harm to him since?” inquired Susan.
+
+“Bless the lass, no, for sure! I’ve ne’er heard his name named since I
+saw him go out of the yard as stout a man as ever trod shoe-leather.”
+
+It was well, as the nurse said afterwards to Peggy, that Susan had been
+so easily pacified by the equivocating answer in respect to her father.
+If she had pressed the questions home in his case as she did in
+Michael’s, she would have learnt that he was dead and buried more than
+a month before. It was well, too, that in her weak state of
+convalescence (which lasted long after this first day of consciousness)
+her perceptions were not sharp enough to observe the sad change that
+had taken place in Willie. His bodily strength returned, his appetite
+was something enormous, but his eyes wandered continually; his regard
+could not be arrested; his speech became slow, impeded, and incoherent.
+People began to say that the fever had taken away the little wit Willie
+Dixon had ever possessed and that they feared that he would end in
+being a “natural,” as they call an idiot in the Dales.
+
+The habitual affection and obedience to Susan lasted longer than any
+other feeling that the boy had had previous to his illness; and,
+perhaps, this made her be the last to perceive what every one else had
+long anticipated. She felt the awakening rude when it did come. It was
+in this wise:—
+
+One June evening, she sat out of doors under the yew-tree, knitting.
+She was pale still from her recent illness; and her languor, joined to
+the fact of her black dress, made her look more than usually
+interesting. She was no longer the buoyant self-sufficient Susan, equal
+to every occasion. The men were bringing in the cows to be milked, and
+Michael was about in the yard giving orders and directions with
+somewhat the air of a master, for the farm belonged of right to Willie,
+and Susan had succeeded to the guardianship of her brother. Michael and
+she were to be married as soon as she was strong enough—so, perhaps,
+his authoritative manner was justified; but the labourers did not like
+it, although they said little. They remembered a stripling on the farm,
+knowing far less than they did, and often glad to shelter his ignorance
+of all agricultural matters behind their superior knowledge. They would
+have taken orders from Susan with far more willingness; nay, Willie
+himself might have commanded them; and from the old hereditary feeling
+toward the owners of land, they would have obeyed him with far greater
+cordiality than they now showed to Michael. But Susan was tired with
+even three rounds of knitting, and seemed not to notice, or to care,
+how things went on around her; and Willie—poor Willie!—there he stood
+lounging against the door-sill, enormously grown and developed, to be
+sure, but with restless eyes and ever-open mouth, and every now and
+then setting up a strange kind of howling cry, and then smiling
+vacantly to himself at the sound he had made. As the two old labourers
+passed him, they looked at each other ominously, and shook their heads.
+
+“Willie, darling,” said Susan, “don’t make that noise—it makes my head
+ache.”
+
+She spoke feebly, and Willie did not seem to hear; at any rate, he
+continued his howl from time to time.
+
+“Hold thy noise, wilt’a?” said Michael, roughly, as he passed near him,
+and threatening him with his fist. Susan’s back was turned to the pair.
+The expression of Willie’s face changed from vacancy to fear, and he
+came shambling up to Susan, who put her arm round him, and, as if
+protected by that shelter, he began making faces at Michael. Susan saw
+what was going on, and, as if now first struck by the strangeness of
+her brother’s manner, she looked anxiously at Michael for an
+explanation. Michael was irritated at Willie’s defiance of him, and did
+not mince the matter.
+
+“It’s just that the fever has left him silly—he never was as wise as
+other folk, and now I doubt if he will ever get right.”
+
+Susan did not speak, but she went very pale, and her lip quivered. She
+looked long and wistfully at Willie’s face, as he watched the motion of
+the ducks in the great stable-pool. He laughed softly to himself every
+now and then.
+
+“Willie likes to see the ducks go overhead,” said Susan, instinctively
+adopting the form of speech she would have used to a young child.
+
+“Willie, boo! Willie, boo!” he replied, clapping his hands, and
+avoiding her eye.
+
+“Speak properly, Willie,” said Susan, making a strong effort at
+self-control, and trying to arrest his attention.
+
+“You know who I am—tell me my name!” She grasped his arm almost
+painfully tight to make him attend. Now he looked at her, and, for an
+instant, a gleam of recognition quivered over his face; but the
+exertion was evidently painful, and he began to cry at the vainness of
+the effort to recall her name. He hid his face upon her shoulder with
+the old affectionate trick of manner. She put him gently away, and went
+into the house into her own little bedroom. She locked the door, and
+did not reply at all to Michael’s calls for her, hardly spoke to old
+Peggy, who tried to tempt her out to receive some homely sympathy, and
+through the open easement there still came the idiotic sound of
+“Willie, boo! Willie, boo!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+After the stun of the blow came the realization of the consequences.
+Susan would sit for hours trying patiently to recall and piece together
+fragments of recollection and consciousness in her brother’s mind. She
+would let him go and pursue some senseless bit of play, and wait until
+she could catch his eye or his attention again, when she would resume
+her self-imposed task. Michael complained that she never had a word for
+him, or a minute of time to spend with him now; but she only said she
+must try, while there was yet a chance, to bring back her brother’s
+lost wits. As for marriage in this state of uncertainty, she had no
+heart to think of it. Then Michael stormed, and absented himself for
+two or three days; but it was of no use. When he came back, he saw that
+she had been crying till her eyes were all swollen up, and he gathered
+from Peggy’s scoldings (which she did not spare him) that Susan had
+eaten nothing since he went away. But she was as inflexible as ever.
+
+“Not just yet. Only not just yet. And don’t say again that I do not
+love you,” said she, suddenly hiding herself in his arms.
+
+And so matters went on through August. The crop of oats was gathered
+in; the wheat-field was not ready as yet, when one fine day Michael
+drove up in a borrowed shandry, and offered to take Willie a ride. His
+manner, when Susan asked him where he was going to, was rather
+confused; but the answer was straight and clear enough.
+
+He had business in Ambleside. He would never lose sight of the lad, and
+have him back safe and sound before dark. So Susan let him go.
+
+Before night they were at home again: Willie in high delight at a
+little rattling paper windmill that Michael had bought for him in the
+street, and striving to imitate this new sound with perpetual buzzings.
+Michael, too, looked pleased. Susan knew the look, although afterwards
+she remembered that he had tried to veil it from her, and had assumed a
+grave appearance of sorrow whenever he caught her eye. He put up his
+horse; for, although he had three miles further to go, the moon was
+up—the bonny harvest-moon—and he did not care how late he had to drive
+on such a road by such a light. After the supper which Susan had
+prepared for the travellers was over, Peggy went up-stairs to see
+Willie safe in bed; for he had to have the same care taken of him that
+a little child of four years old requires.
+
+Michael drew near to Susan.
+
+“Susan,” said he, “I took Will to see Dr. Preston, at Kendal. He’s the
+first doctor in the county. I thought it were better for us—for you—to
+know at once what chance there were for him.”
+
+“Well!” said Susan, looking eagerly up. She saw the same strange glance
+of satisfaction, the same instant change to apparent regret and pain.
+“What did he say?” said she. “Speak! can’t you?”
+
+“He said he would never get better of his weakness.”
+
+“Never!”
+
+“No; never. It’s a long word, and hard to bear. And there’s worse to
+come, dearest. The doctor thinks he will get badder from year to year.
+And he said, if he was us—you—he would send him off in time to
+Lancaster Asylum. They’ve ways there both of keeping such people in
+order and making them happy. I only tell you what he said,” continued
+he, seeing the gathering storm in her face.
+
+“There was no harm in his saying it,” she replied, with great
+self-constraint, forcing herself to speak coldly instead of angrily.
+“Folk is welcome to their opinions.”
+
+They sat silent for a minute or two, her breast heaving with suppressed
+feeling.
+
+“He’s counted a very clever man,” said Michael at length.
+
+“He may be. He’s none of my clever men, nor am I going to be guided by
+him, whatever he may think. And I don’t thank them that went and took
+my poor lad to have such harsh notions formed about him. If I’d been
+there, I could have called out the sense that is in him.”
+
+“Well! I’ll not say more to-night, Susan. You’re not taking it rightly,
+and I’d best be gone, and leave you to think it over. I’ll not deny
+they are hard words to hear, but there’s sense in them, as I take it;
+and I reckon you’ll have to come to ’em. Anyhow, it’s a bad way of
+thanking me for my pains, and I don’t take it well in you, Susan,” said
+he, getting up, as if offended.
+
+“Michael, I’m beside myself with sorrow. Don’t blame me if I speak
+sharp. He and me is the only ones, you see. And mother did so charge me
+to have a care of him! And this is what he’s come to, poor lile chap!”
+She began to cry, and Michael to comfort her with caresses.
+
+“Don’t,” said she. “It’s no use trying to make me forget poor Willie is
+a natural. I could hate myself for being happy with you, even for just
+a little minute. Go away, and leave me to face it out.”
+
+“And you’ll think it over, Susan, and remember what the doctor says?”
+
+“I can’t forget,” said she. She meant she could not forget what the
+doctor had said about the hopelessness of her brother’s case; Michael
+had referred to the plan of sending Willie to an asylum, or madhouse,
+as they were called in that day and place. The idea had been gathering
+force in Michael’s mind for some time; he had talked it over with his
+father, and secretly rejoiced over the possession of the farm and land
+which would then be his in fact, if not in law, by right of his wife.
+He had always considered the good penny her father could give her in
+his catalogue of Susan’s charms and attractions. But of late he had
+grown to esteem her as the heiress of Yew Nook. He, too, should have
+land like his brother—land to possess, to cultivate, to make profit
+from, to bequeath. For some time he had wondered that Susan had been so
+much absorbed in Willie’s present, that she had never seemed to look
+forward to his future, state. Michael had long felt the boy to be a
+trouble; but of late he had absolutely loathed him. His gibbering, his
+uncouth gestures, his loose, shambling gait, all irritated Michael
+inexpressibly. He did not come near the Yew Nook for a couple of days.
+He thought that he would leave her time to become anxious to see him
+and reconciled to his plan. They were strange lonely days to Susan.
+They were the first she had spent face to face with the sorrows that
+had turned her from a girl into a woman; for hitherto Michael had never
+let twenty-four hours pass by without coming to see her since she had
+had the fever. Now that he was absent, it seemed as though some cause
+of irritation was removed from Will, who was much more gentle and
+tractable than he had been for many weeks. Susan thought that she
+observed him making efforts at her bidding, and there was something
+piteous in the way in which he crept up to her, and looked wistfully in
+her face, as if asking her to restore him the faculties that he felt to
+be wanting.
+
+“I never will let thee go, lad. Never! There’s no knowing where they
+would take thee to, or what they would do with thee. As it says in the
+Bible, ‘Nought but death shall part thee and me!’”
+
+The country-side was full, in those days, of stories of the brutal
+treatment offered to the insane; stories that were, in fact, but too
+well founded, and the truth of one of which only would have been a
+sufficient reason for the strong prejudice existing against all such
+places. Each succeeding hour that Susan passed, alone, or with the poor
+affectionate lad for her sole companion, served to deepen her solemn
+resolution never to part with him. So, when Michael came, he was
+annoyed and surprised by the calm way in which she spoke, as if
+following Dr. Preston’s advice was utterly and entirely out of the
+question. He had expected nothing less than a consent, reluctant it
+might be, but still a consent; and he was extremely irritated. He could
+have repressed his anger, but he chose rather to give way to it;
+thinking that he could thus best work upon Susan’s affection, so as to
+gain his point. But, somehow, he over-reached himself; and now he was
+astonished in his turn at the passion of indignation that she burst
+into.
+
+“Thou wilt not bide in the same house with him, say’st thou? There’s no
+need for thy biding, as far as I can tell. There’s solemn reason why I
+should bide with my own flesh and blood and keep to the word I pledged
+my mother on her death-bed; but, as for thee, there’s no tie that I
+know on to keep thee fro’ going to America or Botany Bay this very
+night, if that were thy inclination. I will have no more of your
+threats to make me send my bairn away. If thou marry me, thou’lt help
+me to take charge of Willie. If thou doesn’t choose to marry me on
+those terms—why, I can snap my fingers at thee, never fear. I’m not so
+far gone in love as that. But I will not have thee, if thou say’st in
+such a hectoring way that Willie must go out of the house—and the house
+his own too—before thoul’t set foot in it. Willie bides here, and I
+bide with him.”
+
+“Thou hast may-be spoken a word too much,” said Michael, pale with
+rage. “If I am free, as thou say’st, to go to Canada, or Botany Bay, I
+reckon I’m free to live where I like, and that will not be with a
+natural who may turn into a madman some day, for aught I know. Choose
+between him and me, Susy, for I swear to thee, thou shan’t have both.”
+
+“I have chosen,” said Susan, now perfectly composed and still.
+“Whatever comes of it, I bide with Willie.”
+
+“Very well,” replied Michael, trying to assume an equal composure of
+manner. “Then I’ll wish you a very good night.” He went out of the
+house door, half-expecting to be called back again; but, instead, he
+heard a hasty step inside, and a bolt drawn.
+
+“Whew!” said he to himself, “I think I must leave my lady alone for a
+week or two, and give her time to come to her senses. She’ll not find
+it so easy as she thinks to let me go.”
+
+So he went past the kitchen-window in nonchalant style, and was not
+seen again at Yew Nook for some weeks. How did he pass the time? For
+the first day or two, he was unusually cross with all things and people
+that came athwart him. Then wheat-harvest began, and he was busy, and
+exultant about his heavy crop. Then a man came from a distance to bid
+for the lease of his farm, which, by his father’s advice, had been
+offered for sale, as he himself was so soon likely to remove to the Yew
+Nook. He had so little idea that Susan really would remain firm to her
+determination, that he at once began to haggle with the man who came
+after his farm, showed him the crop just got in, and managed skilfully
+enough to make a good bargain for himself. Of course, the bargain had
+to be sealed at the public-house; and the companions he met with there
+soon became friends enough to tempt him into Langdale, where again he
+met with Eleanor Hebthwaite.
+
+How did Susan pass the time? For the first day or so, she was too angry
+and offended to cry. She went about her household duties in a quick,
+sharp, jerking, yet absent way; shrinking one moment from Will,
+overwhelming him with remorseful caresses the next. The third day of
+Michael’s absence, she had the relief of a good fit of crying; and
+after that, she grew softer and more tender; she felt how harshly she
+had spoken to him, and remembered how angry she had been. She made
+excuses for him. “It was no wonder,” she said to herself, “that he had
+been vexed with her; and no wonder he would not give in, when she had
+never tried to speak gently or to reason with him. She was to blame,
+and she would tell him so, and tell him once again all that her mother
+had bade her to be to Willie, and all the horrible stories she had
+heard about madhouses, and he would be on her side at once.”
+
+And so she watched for his coming, intending to apologise as soon as
+ever she saw him. She hurried over her household work, in order to sit
+quietly at her sewing, and hear the first distant sound of his
+well-known step or whistle. But even the sound of her flying needle
+seemed too loud—perhaps she was losing an exquisite instant of
+anticipation; so she stopped sewing, and looked longingly out through
+the geranium leaves, in order that her eye might catch the first stir
+of the branches in the wood-path by which he generally came. Now and
+then a bird might spring out of the covert; otherwise the leaves were
+heavily still in the sultry weather of early autumn. Then she would
+take up her sewing, and, with a spasm of resolution, she would
+determine that a certain task should be fulfilled before she would
+again allow herself the poignant luxury of expectation. Sick at heart
+was she when the evening closed in, and the chances of that day
+diminished. Yet she stayed up longer than usual, thinking that if he
+were coming—if he were only passing along the distant road—the sight of
+a light in the window might encourage him to make his appearance even
+at that late hour, while seeing the house all darkened and shut up
+might quench any such intention.
+
+Very sick and weary at heart, she went to bed; too desolate and
+despairing to cry, or make any moan. But in the morning hope came
+afresh. Another day—another chance! And so it went on for weeks. Peggy
+understood her young mistress’s sorrow full well, and respected it by
+her silence on the subject. Willie seemed happier now that the
+irritation of Michael’s presence was removed; for the poor idiot had a
+sort of antipathy to Michael, which was a kind of heart’s echo to the
+repugnance in which the latter held him. Altogether, just at this time,
+Willie was the happiest of the three.
+
+As Susan went into Coniston, to sell her butter, one Saturday, some
+inconsiderate person told her that she had seen Michael Hurst the night
+before. I said inconsiderate, but I might rather have said unobservant;
+for any one who had spent half-an-hour in Susan Dixon’s company might
+have seen that she disliked having any reference made to the subjects
+nearest her heart, were they joyous or grievous. Now she went a little
+paler than usual (and she had never recovered her colour since she had
+had the fever), and tried to keep silence. But an irrepressible pang
+forced out the question—
+
+“Where?”
+
+“At Thomas Applethwaite’s, in Langdale. They had a kind of
+harvest-home, and he were there among the young folk, and very thick
+wi’ Nelly Hebthwaite, old Thomas’s niece. Thou’lt have to look after
+him a bit, Susan!”
+
+She neither smiled nor sighed. The neighbour who had been speaking to
+her was struck with the gray stillness of her face. Susan herself felt
+how well her self-command was obeyed by every little muscle, and said
+to herself in her Spartan manner, “I can bear it without either wincing
+or blenching.” She went home early, at a tearing, passionate pace,
+trampling and breaking through all obstacles of briar or bush. Willie
+was moping in her absence—hanging listlessly on the farm-yard gate to
+watch for her. When he saw her, he set up one of his strange,
+inarticulate cries, of which she was now learning the meaning, and came
+towards her with his loose, galloping run, head and limbs all shaking
+and wagging with pleasant excitement. Suddenly she turned from him, and
+burst into tears. She sat down on a stone by the wayside, not a hundred
+yards from home, and buried her face in her hands, and gave way to a
+passion of pent-up sorrow; so terrible and full of agony were her low
+cries, that the idiot stood by her, aghast and silent. All his joy gone
+for the time, but not, like her joy, turned into ashes. Some thought
+struck him. Yes! the sight of her woe made him think, great as the
+exertion was. He ran, and stumbled, and shambled home, buzzing with his
+lips all the time. She never missed him. He came back in a trice,
+bringing with him his cherished paper windmill, bought on that fatal
+day when Michael had taken him into Kendal to have his doom of
+perpetual idiocy pronounced. He thrust it into Susan’s face, her hands,
+her lap, regardless of the injury his frail plaything thereby received.
+He leapt before her to think how he had cured all heart-sorrow, buzzing
+louder than ever. Susan looked up at him, and that glance of her sad
+eyes sobered him. He began to whimper, he knew not why: and she now,
+comforter in her turn, tried to soothe him by twirling his windmill.
+But it was broken; it made no noise; it would not go round. This seemed
+to afflict Susan more than him. She tried to make it right, although
+she saw the task was hopeless; and while she did so, the tears rained
+down unheeded from her bent head on the paper toy.
+
+“It won’t do,” said she, at last. “It will never do again.” And,
+somehow, she took the accident and her words as omens of the love that
+was broken, and that she feared could never be pieced together more.
+She rose up and took Willie’s hand, and the two went slowly into the
+house.
+
+To her surprise, Michael Hurst sat in the house-place. House-place is a
+sort of better kitchen, where no cookery is done, but which is reserved
+for state occasions. Michael had gone in there because he was
+accompanied by his only sister, a woman older than himself, who was
+well married beyond Keswick, and who now came for the first time to
+make acquaintance with Susan. Michael had primed his sister with his
+wishes regarding Will, and the position in which he stood with Susan;
+and arriving at Yew Nook in the absence of the latter, he had not
+scrupled to conduct his sister into the guest-room, as he held Mrs.
+Gale’s worldly position in respect and admiration, and therefore wished
+her to be favourably impressed with all the signs of property which he
+was beginning to consider as Susan’s greatest charms. He had secretly
+said to himself, that if Eleanor Hebthwaite and Susan Dixon were equal
+in point of riches, he would sooner have Eleanor by far. He had begun
+to consider Susan as a termagant; and when he thought of his
+intercourse with her, recollections of her somewhat warm and hasty
+temper came far more readily to his mind than any remembrance of her
+generous, loving nature.
+
+And now she stood face to face with him; her eyes tear-swollen, her
+garments dusty, and here and there torn in consequence of her rapid
+progress through the bushy by-paths. She did not make a favourable
+impression on the well-clad Mrs. Gale, dressed in her best silk gown,
+and therefore unusually susceptible to the appearance of another. Nor
+were Susan’s manners gracious or cordial. How could they be, when she
+remembered what had passed between Michael and herself the last time
+they met? For her penitence had faded away under the daily
+disappointment of these last weary weeks.
+
+But she was hospitable in substance. She bade Peggy hurry on the
+kettle, and busied herself among the tea-cups, thankful that the
+presence of Mrs. Gale, as a stranger, would prevent the immediate
+recurrence to the one subject which she felt must be present in
+Michael’s mind as well as in her own. But Mrs. Gale was withheld by no
+such feelings of delicacy. She had come ready-primed with the case, and
+had undertaken to bring the girl to reason. There was no time to be
+lost. It had been prearranged between the brother and sister that he
+was to stroll out into the farm-yard before his sister introduced the
+subject; but she was so confident in the success of her arguments, that
+she must needs have the triumph of a victory as soon as possible; and,
+accordingly, she brought a hail-storm of good reasons to bear upon
+Susan. Susan did not reply for a long time; she was so indignant at
+this intermeddling of a stranger in the deep family sorrow and shame.
+Mrs. Gale thought she was gaining the day, and urged her arguments more
+pitilessly. Even Michael winced for Susan, and wondered at her silence.
+He shrank out of sight, and into the shadow, hoping that his sister
+might prevail, but annoyed at the hard way in which she kept putting
+the case.
+
+Suddenly Susan turned round from the occupation she had pretended to be
+engaged in, and said to him in a low voice, which yet not only vibrated
+itself, but made its hearers thrill through all their obtuseness:
+
+“Michael Hurst! does your sister speak truth, think you?”
+
+Both women looked at him for his answer; Mrs. Gale without anxiety, for
+had she not said the very words they had spoken together before? had
+she not used the very arguments that he himself had suggested? Susan,
+on the contrary, looked to his answer as settling her doom for life;
+and in the gloom of her eyes you might have read more despair than
+hope.
+
+He shuffled his position. He shuffled in his words.
+
+“What is it you ask? My sister has said many things.”
+
+“I ask you,” said Susan, trying to give a crystal clearness both to her
+expressions and her pronunciation, “if, knowing as you do how Will is
+afflicted, you will help me to take that charge of him which I promised
+my mother on her death-bed that I would do; and which means, that I
+shall keep him always with me, and do all in my power to make his life
+happy. If you will do this, I will be your wife; if not, I remain
+unwed.”
+
+“But he may get dangerous; he can be but a trouble; his being here is a
+pain to you, Susan, not a pleasure.”
+
+“I ask you for either yes or no,” said she, a little contempt at his
+evading her question mingling with her tone. He perceived it, and it
+nettled him.
+
+“And I have told you. I answered your question the last time I was
+here. I said I would ne’er keep house with an idiot; no more I will. So
+now you’ve gotten your answer.”
+
+“I have,” said Susan. And she sighed deeply.
+
+“Come, now,” said Mrs. Gale, encouraged by the sigh; “one would think
+you don’t love Michael, Susan, to be so stubborn in yielding to what
+I’m sure would be best for the lad.”
+
+“Oh! she does not care for me,” said Michael. “I don’t believe she ever
+did.”
+
+“Don’t I? Haven’t I?” asked Susan, her eyes blazing out fire. She left
+the room directly, and sent Peggy in to make the tea; and catching at
+Will, who was lounging about in the kitchen, she went up-stairs with
+him and bolted herself in, straining the boy to her heart, and keeping
+almost breathless, lest any noise she made might cause him to break out
+into the howls and sounds which she could not bear that those below
+should hear.
+
+A knock at the door. It was Peggy.
+
+“He wants for to see you, to wish you good-bye.”
+
+“I cannot come. Oh, Peggy, send them away.”
+
+It was her only cry for sympathy; and the old servant understood it.
+She sent them away, somehow; not politely, as I have been given to
+understand.
+
+“Good go with them,” said Peggy, as she grimly watched their retreating
+figures. “We’re rid of bad rubbish, anyhow.” And she turned into the
+house, with the intention of making ready some refreshment for Susan,
+after her hard day at the market, and her harder evening. But in the
+kitchen, to which she passed through the empty house-place, making a
+face of contemptuous dislike at the used tea-cups and fragments of a
+meal yet standing there, she found Susan, with her sleeves tucked up
+and her working apron on, busied in preparing to make clap-bread, one
+of the hardest and hottest domestic tasks of a Daleswoman. She looked
+up, and first met, and then avoided Peggy’s eye; it was too full of
+sympathy. Her own cheeks were flushed, and her own eyes were dry and
+burning.
+
+“Where’s the board, Peggy? We need clap-bread; and, I reckon, I’ve time
+to get through with it to-night.” Her voice had a sharp, dry tone in
+it, and her motions a jerking angularity about them.
+
+Peggy said nothing, but fetched her all that she needed. Susan beat her
+cakes thin with vehement force. As she stooped over them, regardless
+even of the task in which she seemed so much occupied, she was
+surprised by a touch on her mouth of something—what she did not see at
+first. It was a cup of tea, delicately sweetened and cooled, and held
+to her lips, when exactly ready, by the faithful old woman. Susan held
+it off a hand’s breath, and looked into Peggy’s eyes, while her own
+filled with the strange relief of tears.
+
+“Lass!” said Peggy, solemnly, “thou hast done well. It is not long to
+bide, and then the end will come.”
+
+“But you are very old, Peggy,” said Susan, quivering.
+
+“It is but a day sin’ I were young,” replied Peggy; but she stopped the
+conversation by again pushing the cup with gentle force to Susan’s dry
+and thirsty lips. When she had drunken she fell again to her labour,
+Peggy heating the hearth, and doing all that she knew would be
+required, but never speaking another word. Willie basked close to the
+fire, enjoying the animal luxury of warmth, for the autumn evenings
+were beginning to be chilly. It was one o’clock before they thought of
+going to bed on that memorable night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+The vehemence with which Susan Dixon threw herself into occupation
+could not last for ever. Times of languor and remembrance would
+come—times when she recurred with a passionate yearning to bygone days,
+the recollection of which was so vivid and delicious, that it seemed as
+though it were the reality, and the present bleak bareness the dream.
+She smiled anew at the magical sweetness of some touch or tone which in
+memory she felt and heard, and drank the delicious cup of poison,
+although at the very time she knew what the consequences of racking
+pain would be.
+
+“This time, last year,” thought she, “we went nutting together—this
+very day last year; just such a day as to-day. Purple and gold were the
+lights on the hills; the leaves were just turning brown; here and there
+on the sunny slopes the stubble-fields looked tawny; down in a cleft of
+yon purple slate-rock the beck fell like a silver glancing thread; all
+just as it is to-day. And he climbed the slender, swaying nut-trees,
+and bent the branches for me to gather; or made a passage through the
+hazel copses, from time to time claiming a toll. Who could have thought
+he loved me so little?—who?—who?”
+
+Or, as the evening closed in, she would allow herself to imagine that
+she heard his coming step, just that she might recall time feeling of
+exquisite delight which had passed by without the due and passionate
+relish at the time. Then she would wonder how she could have had
+strength, the cruel, self-piercing strength, to say what she had done;
+to stab himself with that stern resolution, of which the sear would
+remain till her dying day. It might have been right; but, as she
+sickened, she wished she had not instinctively chosen the right. How
+luxurious a life haunted by no stern sense of duty must be! And many
+led this kind of life; why could not she? O, for one hour again of his
+sweet company! If he came now, she would agree to whatever he proposed.
+
+It was a fever of the mind. She passed through it, and came out
+healthy, if weak. She was capable once more of taking pleasure in
+following an unseen guide through briar and brake. She returned with
+tenfold affection to her protecting care of Willie. She acknowledged to
+herself that he was to be her all-in-all in life. She made him her
+constant companion. For his sake, as the real owner of Yew Nook, and
+she as his steward and guardian, she began that course of careful
+saving, and that love of acquisition, which afterwards gained for her
+the reputation of being miserly. She still thought that he might regain
+a scanty portion of sense—enough to require some simple pleasures and
+excitement, which would cost money. And money should not be wanting.
+Peggy rather assisted her in the formation of her parsimonious habits
+than otherwise; economy was the order of the district, and a certain
+degree of respectable avarice the characteristic of her age. Only
+Willie was never stinted nor hindered of anything that the two women
+thought could give him pleasure, for want of money.
+
+There was one gratification which Susan felt was needed for the
+restoration of her mind to its more healthy state, after she had passed
+through the whirling fever, when duty was as nothing, and anarchy
+reigned; a gratification that, somehow, was to be her last burst of
+unreasonableness; of which she knew and recognised pain as the sure
+consequence. She must see him once more,—herself unseen.
+
+The week before the Christmas of this memorable year, she went out in
+the dusk of the early winter evening, wrapped close in shawl and cloak.
+She wore her dark shawl under her cloak, putting it over her head in
+lieu of a bonnet; for she knew that she might have to wait long in
+concealment. Then she tramped over the wet fell-path, shut in by misty
+rain for miles and miles, till she came to the place where he was
+lodging; a farm-house in Langdale, with a steep, stony lane leading up
+to it: this lane was entered by a gate out of the main road, and by the
+gate were a few bushes—thorns; but of them the leaves had fallen, and
+they offered no concealment: an old wreck of a yew-tree grew among
+them, however, and underneath that Susan cowered down, shrouding her
+face, of which the colour might betray her, with a corner of her shawl.
+Long did she wait; cold and cramped she became, too damp and stiff to
+change her posture readily. And after all, he might never come! But,
+she would wait till daylight, if need were; and she pulled out a crust,
+with which she had providently supplied herself. The rain had ceased,—a
+dull, still, brooding weather had succeeded; it was a night to hear
+distant sounds. She heard horses’ hoofs striking and splashing in the
+stones, and in the pools of the road at her back. Two horses; not
+well-ridden, or evenly guided, as she could tell.
+
+Michael Hurst and a companion drew near: not tipsy, but not sober. They
+stopped at the gate to bid each other a maudlin farewell. Michael
+stooped forward to catch the latch with the hook of the stick which he
+carried; he dropped the stick, and it fell with one end close to
+Susan,—indeed, with the slightest change of posture she could have
+opened the gate for him. He swore a great oath, and struck his horse
+with his closed fist, as if that animal had been to blame; then he
+dismounted, opened the gate, and fumbled about for his stick. When he
+had found it (Susan had touched the other end) his first use of it was
+to flog his horse well, and she had much ado to avoid its kicks and
+plunges. Then, still swearing, he staggered up the lane, for it was
+evident he was not sober enough to remount.
+
+By daylight Susan was back and at her daily labours at Yew Nook. When
+the spring came, Michael Hurst was married to Eleanor Hebthwaite.
+Others, too, were married, and christenings made their firesides merry
+and glad; or they travelled, and came back after long years with many
+wondrous tales. More rarely, perhaps, a Dalesman changed his dwelling.
+But to all households more change came than to Yew Nook. There the
+seasons came round with monotonous sameness; or, if they brought
+mutation, it was of a slow, and decaying, and depressing kind. Old
+Peggy died. Her silent sympathy, concealed under much roughness, was a
+loss to Susan Dixon. Susan was not yet thirty when this happened, but
+she looked a middle-aged, not to say an elderly woman. People affirmed
+that she had never recovered her complexion since that fever, a dozen
+years ago, which killed her father, and left Will Dixon an idiot. But
+besides her gray sallowness, the lines in her face were strong, and
+deep, and hard. The movements of her eyeballs were slow and heavy; the
+wrinkles at the corners of her mouth and eyes were planted firm and
+sure; not an ounce of unnecessary flesh was there on her bones—every
+muscle started strong and ready for use. She needed all this bodily
+strength, to a degree that no human creature, now Peggy was dead, knew
+of: for Willie had grown up large and strong in body, and, in general,
+docile enough in mind; but, every now and then, he became first moody,
+and then violent. These paroxysms lasted but a day or two; and it was
+Susan’s anxious care to keep their very existence hidden and unknown.
+It is true, that occasional passers-by on that lonely road heard sounds
+at night of knocking about of furniture, blows, and cries, as of some
+tearing demon within the solitary farm-house; but these fits of
+violence usually occurred in the night; and whatever had been their
+consequence, Susan had tidied and redded up all signs of aught unusual
+before the morning. For, above all, she dreaded lest some one might
+find out in what danger and peril she occasionally was, and might
+assume a right to take away her brother from her care. The one idea of
+taking charge of him had deepened and deepened with years. It was
+graven into her mind as the object for which she lived. The sacrifice
+she had made for this object only made it more precious to her.
+Besides, she separated the idea of the docile, affectionate, loutish,
+indolent Will, and kept it distinct from the terror which the demon
+that occasionally possessed him inspired her with. The one was her
+flesh and her blood—the child of her dead mother; the other was some
+fiend who came to torture and convulse the creature she so loved. She
+believed that she fought her brother’s battle in holding down those
+tearing hands, in binding whenever she could those uplifted restless
+arms prompt and prone to do mischief. All the time she subdued him with
+her cunning or her strength, she spoke to him in pitying murmurs, or
+abused the third person, the fiendish enemy, in no unmeasured tones.
+Towards morning the paroxysm was exhausted, and he would fall asleep,
+perhaps only to waken with evil and renewed vigour. But when he was
+laid down, she would sally out to taste the fresh air, and to work off
+her wild sorrow in cries and mutterings to herself. The early labourers
+saw her gestures at a distance, and thought her as crazed as the
+idiot-brother who made the neighbourhood a haunted place. But did any
+chance person call at Yew Nook later on in the day, he would find Susan
+Dixon cold, calm, collected; her manner curt, her wits keen.
+
+Once this fit of violence lasted longer than usual. Susan’s strength
+both of mind and body was nearly worn out; she wrestled in prayer that
+somehow it might end before she, too, was driven mad; or, worse, might
+be obliged to give up life’s aim, and consign Willie to a madhouse.
+From that moment of prayer (as she afterwards superstitiously thought)
+Willie calmed—and then he drooped—and then he sank—and, last of all, he
+died in reality from physical exhaustion.
+
+But he was so gentle and tender as he lay on his dying bed; such
+strange, child-like gleams of returning intelligence came over his
+face, long after the power to make his dull, inarticulate sounds had
+departed, that Susan was attracted to him by a stronger tie than she
+had ever felt before. It was something to have even an idiot loving her
+with dumb, wistful, animal affection; something to have any creature
+looking at her with such beseeching eyes, imploring protection from the
+insidious enemy stealing on. And yet she knew that to him death was no
+enemy, but a true friend, restoring light and health to his poor
+clouded mind. It was to her that death was an enemy; to her, the
+survivor, when Willie died; there was no one to love her.
+
+Worse doom still, there was no one left on earth for her to love.
+
+You now know why no wandering tourist could persuade her to receive him
+as a lodger; why no tired traveller could melt her heart to afford him
+rest and refreshment; why long habits of seclusion had given her a
+moroseness of manner, and how care for the interests of another had
+rendered her keen and miserly.
+
+But there was a third act in the drama of her life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+In spite of Peggy’s prophecy that Susan’s life should not seem long, it
+did seem wearisome and endless, as the years slowly uncoiled their
+monotonous circles. To be sure, she might have made change for herself,
+but she did not care to do it. It was, indeed, more than “not caring,”
+which merely implies a certain degree of _vis inertiæ_ to be subdued
+before an object can be attained, and that the object itself does not
+seem to be of sufficient importance to call out the requisite energy.
+On the contrary, Susan exerted herself to avoid change and variety. She
+had a morbid dread of new faces, which originated in her desire to keep
+poor dead Willie’s state a profound secret. She had a contempt for new
+customs; and, indeed, her old ways prospered so well under her active
+hand and vigilant eye, that it was difficult to know how they could be
+improved upon. She was regularly present in Coniston market with the
+best butter and the earliest chickens of the season. Those were the
+common farm produce that every farmer’s wife about had to sell; but
+Susan, after she had disposed of the more feminine articles, turned to
+on the man’s side. A better judge of a horse or cow there was not in
+all the country round. Yorkshire itself might have attempted to jockey
+her, and would have failed. Her corn was sound and clean; her potatoes
+well preserved to the latest spring. People began to talk of the hoards
+of money Susan Dixon must have laid up somewhere; and one young
+ne’er-do-weel of a farmer’s son undertook to make love to the woman of
+forty, who looked fifty-five, if a day. He made up to her by opening a
+gate on the road-path home, as she was riding on a bare-backed horse,
+her purchase not an hour ago. She was off before him, refusing his
+civility; but the remounting was not so easy, and rather than fail she
+did not choose to attempt it. She walked, and he walked alongside,
+improving his opportunity, which, as he vainly thought, had been
+consciously granted to him. As they drew near Yew Nook, he ventured on
+some expression of a wish to keep company with her. His words were
+vague and clumsily arranged. Susan turned round and coolly asked him to
+explain himself, he took courage, as he thought of her reputed wealth,
+and expressed his wishes this second time pretty plainly. To his
+surprise, the reply she made was in a series of smart strokes across
+his shoulders, administered through the medium of a supple
+hazel-switch.
+
+“Take that!” said she, almost breathless, “to teach thee how thou
+darest make a fool of an honest woman old enough to be thy mother. If
+thou com’st a step nearer the house, there’s a good horse-pool, and
+there’s two stout fellows who’ll like no better fun than ducking thee.
+Be off wi’ thee!”
+
+And she strode into her own premises, never looking round to see
+whether he obeyed her injunction or not.
+
+Sometimes three or four years would pass over without her hearing
+Michael Hurst’s name mentioned. She used to wonder at such times
+whether he were dead or alive. She would sit for hours by the dying
+embers of her fire on a winter’s evening, trying to recall the scenes
+of her youth; trying to bring up living pictures of the faces she had
+then known—Michael’s most especially. She thought it was possible, so
+long had been the lapse of years, that she might now pass by him in the
+street unknowing and unknown. His outward form she might not recognize,
+but himself she should feel in the thrill of her whole being. He could
+not pass her unawares.
+
+What little she did hear about him, all testified a downward tendency.
+He drank—not at stated times when there was no other work to be done,
+but continually, whether it was seed-time or harvest. His children were
+all ill at the same time; then one died, while the others recovered,
+but were poor sickly things. No one dared to give Susan any direct
+intelligence of her former lover; many avoided all mention of his name
+in her presence; but a few spoke out either in indifference to, or
+ignorance of, those bygone days. Susan heard every word, every whisper,
+every sound that related to him. But her eye never changed, nor did a
+muscle of her face move.
+
+Late one November night she sat over her fire; not a human being
+besides herself in the house; none but she had ever slept there since
+Willie’s death. The farm-labourers had foddered the cattle and gone
+home hours before. There were crickets chirping all round the warm
+hearth-stones; there was the clock ticking with the peculiar beat Susan
+had known from her childhood, and which then and ever since she had
+oddly associated within the idea of a mother and child talking
+together, one loud tick, and quick—a feeble, sharp one following.
+
+The day had been keen, and piercingly cold. The whole lift of heaven
+seemed a dome of iron. Black and frost-bound was the earth under the
+cruel east wind. Now the wind had dropped, and as the darkness had
+gathered in, the weather-wise old labourers prophesied snow. The sounds
+in the air arose again, as Susan sat still and silent. They were of a
+different character to what they had been during the prevalence of the
+east wind. Then they had been shrill and piping; now they were like low
+distant growling; not unmusical, but strangely threatening. Susan went
+to the window, and drew aside the little curtain. The whole world was
+white—the air was blinded with the swift and heavy fall of snow. At
+present it came down straight, but Susan knew those distant sounds in
+the hollows and gulleys of the hills portended a driving wind and a
+more cruel storm. She thought of her sheep; were they all folded? the
+new-born calf, was it bedded well? Before the drifts were formed too
+deep for her to pass in and out—and by the morning she judged that they
+would be six or seven feet deep—she would go out and see after the
+comfort of her beasts. She took a lantern, and tied a shawl over her
+head, and went out into the open air. She had tenderly provided for all
+her animals, and was returning, when, borne on the blast as if some
+spirit-cry—for it seemed to come rather down from the skies than from
+any creature standing on earth’s level—she heard a voice of agony; she
+could not distinguish words; it seemed rather as if some bird of prey
+was being caught in the whirl of the icy wind, and torn and tortured by
+its violence. Again up high above! Susan put down her lantern, and
+shouted loud in return; it was an instinct, for if the creature were
+not human, which she had doubted but a moment before, what good could
+her responding cry do? And her cry was seized on by the tyrannous wind,
+and borne farther away in the opposite direction to that from which the
+call of agony had proceeded. Again she listened; no sound: then again
+it rang through space; and this time she was sure it was human. She
+turned into the house, and heaped turf and wood on the fire, which,
+careless of her own sensations, she had allowed to fade and almost die
+out. She put a new candle in her lantern; she changed her shawl for a
+maud, and leaving the door on latch, she sallied out. Just at the
+moment when her ear first encountered the weird noises of the storm, on
+issuing forth into the open air, she thought she heard the words, “O
+God! O help!” They were a guide to her, if words they were, for they
+came straight from a rock not a quarter of a mile from Yew Nook, but
+only to be reached, on account of its precipitous character, by a
+round-about path. Thither she steered, defying wind and snow; guided by
+here a thorn-tree, there an old, doddered oak, which had not quite lest
+their identity under the whelming mask of snow. Now and then she
+stopped to listen; but never a word or sound heard she, till right from
+where the copse-wood grew thick and tangled at the base of the rock,
+round which she was winding, she heard a moan. Into the brake—all snow
+in appearance—almost a plain of snow looked on from the little eminence
+where she stood—she plunged, breaking down the bush, stumbling,
+bruising herself, fighting her way; her lantern held between her teeth,
+and she herself using head as well as hands to butt away a passage, at
+whatever cost of bodily injury. As she climbed or staggered, owing to
+the unevenness of the snow-covered ground, where the briars and weeds
+of years were tangled and matted together, her foot felt something
+strangely soft and yielding. She lowered her lantern; there lay a man,
+prone on his face, nearly covered by the fast-falling flakes; he must
+have fallen from the rock above, as, not knowing of the circuitous
+path, he had tried to descend its steep, slippery face. Who could tell?
+it was no time for thinking. Susan lifted him up with her wiry
+strength; he gave no help—no sign of life; but for all that he might be
+alive: he was still warm; she tied her maud round him; she fastened the
+lantern to her apron-string; she held him tight: half-carrying,
+half-dragging—what did a few bruises signify to him, compared to dear
+life, to precious life! She got him through the brake, and down the
+path. There, for an instant, she stopped to take breath; but, as if
+stung by the Furies, she pushed on again with almost superhuman
+strength. Clasping him round the waist, and leaning his dead weight
+against the lintel of the door, she tried to undo the latch; but now,
+just at this moment, a trembling faintness came over her, and a fearful
+dread took possession of her—that here, on the very threshold of her
+home, she might be found dead, and buried under the snow, when the
+farm-servants came in the morning. This terror stirred her up to one
+more effort. Then she and her companion were in the warmth of the quiet
+haven of that kitchen; she laid him on the settle, and sank on the
+floor by his side. How long she remained in this swoon she could not
+tell; not very long she judged by the fire, which was still red and
+sullenly glowing when she came to herself. She lighted the candle, and
+bent over her late burden to ascertain if indeed he were dead. She
+stood long gazing. The man lay dead. There could be no doubt about it.
+His filmy eyes glared at her, unshut. But Susan was not one to be
+affrighted by the stony aspect of death. It was not that; it was the
+bitter, woeful recognition of Michael Hurst!
+
+She was convinced he was dead; but after a while she refused to believe
+in her conviction. She stripped off his wet outer-garments with
+trembling, hurried hands. She brought a blanket down from her own bed;
+she made up the fire. She swathed him in fresh, warm wrappings, and
+laid him on the flags before the fire, sitting herself at his head, and
+holding it in her lap, while she tenderly wiped his loose, wet hair,
+curly still, although its colour had changed from nut-brown to
+iron-gray since she had seen it last. From time to time she bent over
+the face afresh, sick, and fain to believe that the flicker of the
+fire-light was some slight convulsive motion. But the dim, staring eyes
+struck chill to her heart. At last she ceased her delicate, busy cares:
+but she still held the head softly, as if caressing it. She thought
+over all the possibilities and chances in the mingled yarn of their
+lives that might, by so slight a turn, have ended far otherwise. If her
+mother’s cold had been early tended, so that the responsibility as to
+her brother’s weal or woe had not fallen upon her; if the fever had not
+taken such rough, cruel hold on Will; nay, if Mrs. Gale, that hard,
+worldly sister, had not accompanied him on his last visit to Yew
+Nook—his very last before this fatal, stormy might; if she had heard
+his cry,—cry uttered by these pale, dead lips with such wild,
+despairing agony, not yet three hours ago!—O! if she had but heard it
+sooner, he might have been saved before that blind, false step had
+precipitated him down the rock! In going over this weary chain of
+unrealized possibilities, Susan learnt the force of Peggy’s words. Life
+was short, looking back upon it. It seemed but yesterday since all the
+love of her being had been poured out, and run to waste. The
+intervening years—the long monotonous years that had turned her into an
+old woman before her time—were but a dream.
+
+The labourers coming in the dawn of the winter’s day were surprised to
+see the fire-light through the low kitchen-window. They knocked, and
+hearing a moaning answer, they entered, fearing that something had
+befallen their mistress. For all explanation they got these words
+
+“It is Michael Hurst. He was belated, and fell down the Raven’s Crag.
+Where does Eleanor, his wife, live?”
+
+How Michael Hurst got to Yew Nook no one but Susan ever knew. They
+thought he had dragged himself there, with some sore internal bruise
+sapping away his minuted life. They could not have believed the
+superhuman exertion which had first sought him out, and then dragged
+him hither. Only Susan knew of that.
+
+She gave him into the charge of her servants, and went out and saddled
+her horse. Where the wind had drifted the snow on one side, and the
+road was clear and bare, she rode, and rode fast; where the soft,
+deceitful heaps were massed up, she dismounted and led her steed,
+plunging in deep, with fierce energy, the pain at her heart urging her
+onwards with a sharp, digging spur.
+
+The gray, solemn, winter’s noon was more night-like than the depth of
+summer’s night; dim-purple brooded the low skies over the white earth,
+as Susan rode up to what had been Michael Hurst’s abode while living.
+It was a small farm-house carelessly kept outside, slatternly tended
+within. The pretty Nelly Hebthwaite was pretty still; her delicate face
+had never suffered from any long-enduring feeling. If anything, its
+expression was that of plaintive sorrow; but the soft, light hair had
+scarcely a tinge of gray; the wood-rose tint of complexion yet
+remained, if not so brilliant as in youth; the straight nose, the small
+mouth were untouched by time. Susan felt the contrast even at that
+moment. She knew that her own skin was weather-beaten, furrowed,
+brown,—that her teeth were gone, and her hair gray and ragged. And yet
+she was not two years older than Nelly,—she had not been, in youth,
+when she took account of these things. Nelly stood wondering at the
+strange-enough horse-woman, who stopped and panted at the door, holding
+her horse’s bridle, and refusing to enter.
+
+“Where is Michael Hurst?” asked Susan, at last.
+
+“Well, I can’t rightly say. He should have been at home last night, but
+he was off, seeing after a public-house to be let at Ulverstone, for
+our farm does not answer, and we were thinking—”
+
+“He did not come home last night?” said Susan, cutting short the story,
+and half-affirming, half-questioning, by way of letting in a ray of the
+awful light before she let it full in, in its consuming wrath.
+
+“No! he’ll be stopping somewhere out Ulverstone ways. I’m sure we’ve
+need of him at home, for I’ve no one but lile Tommy to help me tend the
+beasts. Things have not gone well with us, and we don’t keep a servant
+now. But you’re trembling all over, ma’am. You’d better come in, and
+take something warm, while your horse rests. That’s the stable-door, to
+your left.”
+
+Susan took her horse there; loosened his girths, and rubbed him down
+with a wisp of straw. Then she hooked about her for hay; but the place
+was bare of feed, and smelt damp and unused. She went to the house,
+thankful for the respite, and got some clap-bread, which she mashed up
+in a pailful of lukewarm water. Every moment was a respite, and yet
+every moment made her dread the more the task that lay before her. It
+would be longer than she thought at first. She took the saddle off, and
+hung about her horse, which seemed, somehow, more like a friend than
+anything else in the world. She laid her cheek against its neck, and
+rested there, before returning to the house for the last time.
+
+Eleanor had brought down one of her own gowns, which hung on a chair
+against the fire, and had made her unknown visitor a cup of hot tea.
+Susan could hardly bear all these little attentions: they choked her,
+and yet she was so wet, so weak with fatigue and excitement, that she
+could neither resist by voice or by action. Two children stood
+awkwardly about, puzzled at the scene, and even Eleanor began to wish
+for some explanation of who her strange visitor was.
+
+“You’ve, maybe, heard him speaking of me? I’m called Susan Dixon.”
+
+Nelly coloured, and avoided meeting Susan’s eye.
+
+“I’ve heard other folk speak of you. He never named your name.”
+
+This respect of silence came like balm to Susan: balm not felt or
+heeded at the time it was applied, but very grateful in its effects for
+all that.
+
+“He is at my house,” continued Susan, determined not to stop or quaver
+in the operation—the pain which must be inflicted.
+
+“At your house? Yew Nook?” questioned Eleanor, surprised. “How came he
+there?”—half jealously. “Did he take shelter from the coming storm?
+Tell me,—there is something—tell me, woman!”
+
+“He took no shelter. Would to God he had!”
+
+“O! would to God! would to God!” shrieked out Eleanor, learning all
+from the woful import of those dreary eyes. Her cries thrilled through
+the house; the children’s piping wailings and passionate cries on
+“Daddy! Daddy!” pierced into Susan’s very marrow. But she remained as
+still and tearless as the great round face upon the clock.
+
+At last, in a lull of crying, she said,—not exactly questioning, but as
+if partly to herself—
+
+“You loved him, then?”
+
+“Loved him! he was my husband! He was the father of three bonny bairns
+that lie dead in Grasmere churchyard. I wish you’d go, Susan Dixon, and
+let me weep without your watching me! I wish you’d never come near the
+place.”
+
+“Alas! alas! it would not have brought him to life. I would have laid
+down my own to save his. My life has been so very sad! No one would
+have cared if I had died. Alas! alas!”
+
+The tone in which she said this was so utterly mournful and despairing
+that it awed Nelly into quiet for a time. But by-and-by she said, “I
+would not turn a dog out to do it harm; but the night is clear, and
+Tommy shall guide you to the Red Cow. But, oh, I want to be alone! If
+you’ll come back to-morrow, I’ll be better, and I’ll hear all, and
+thank you for every kindness you have shown him,—and I do believe
+you’ve showed him kindness,—though I don’t know why.”
+
+Susan moved heavily and strangely.
+
+She said something—her words came thick and unintelligible. She had had
+a paralytic stroke since she had last spoken. She could not go, even if
+she would. Nor did Eleanor, when she became aware of the state of the
+case, wish her to leave. She had her laid on her own bed, and weeping
+silently all the while for her last husband, she nursed Susan like a
+sister. She did not know what her guest’s worldly position might be;
+and she might never be repaid. But she sold many a little trifle to
+purchase such small comforts as Susan needed. Susan, lying still and
+motionless, learnt much. It was not a severe stroke; it might be the
+forerunner of others yet to come, but at some distance of time. But for
+the present she recovered, and regained much of her former health. On
+her sick-bed she matured her plans. When she returned to Yew Nook, she
+took Michael Hurst’s widow and children with her to live there, and
+fill up the haunted hearth with living forms that should banish the
+ghosts.
+
+And so it fell out that the latter days of Susan Dixon’s life were
+better than the former.
+
+
+
+
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