Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell

by Elizabeth Gaskell

  “Nunc Dimittis” — the sweetest canticle to the holy.

  “Mother, good-night! Dear mother! bless me once more! I’m very tired, and would fain go to sleep.” She never spoke again on this side heaven.

  She died the day after their return from Liverpool. From that time, Jem became aware that his mother was jealously watching for some word or sign which should betoken his wish to return to Mary. And yet go to Liverpool he must and would, as soon as the funeral was over, if but for a simple glimpse of his darling. For Job had never written; indeed, any necessity for his so doing had never entered his head. If Mary died, he would announce it personally; if she recovered, he meant to bring her home with him. Writing was to him little more than an auxiliary to natural history; a way of ticketing specimens, not of expressing thoughts.

  The consequence of this want of intelligence as to Mary’s state was, that Jem was constantly anticipating that every person and every scrap of paper was to convey to him the news of her death. He could not endure this state long; but he resolved not to disturb the house by announcing to his mother his purposed intention of returning to Liverpool, until the dead had been buried forth.

  On Sunday afternoon they laid her low with many tears. Will wept as one who would not be comforted.

  The old childish feeling came over him, the feeling of loneliness at being left among strangers.

  By-and-by, Margaret timidly stole near him, as if waiting to console; and soon his passion sank down to grief, and grief gave way to melancholy, and though he felt as if he never could be joyful again, he was all the while unconsciously approaching nearer to the full happiness of calling Margaret his own, and a golden thread was interwoven even now with the darkness of his sorrow. Yet it was on his arm that Jane Wilson leant on her return homewards. Jem took charge of Margaret.

  “Margaret, I’m bound for Liverpool by the first train to-morrow; I must set your grandfather at liberty.”

  “I’m sure he likes nothing better than watching over poor Mary; he loves her nearly as well as me. But let me go! I have been so full of poor Alice, I’ve never thought of it before; I can’t do so much as many a one, but Mary will like to have a woman about her that she knows. I’m sorry I waited to be reminded, Jem,” replied Margaret, with some little self-reproach.

  But Margaret’s proposition did not at all agree with her companion’s wishes. He found he had better speak out, and put his intention at once to the right motive; the subterfuge about setting Job Legh at liberty had done him harm instead of good.

  “To tell truth, Margaret, it’s I that must go, and that for my own sake, not your grandfather’s. I can rest neither by night nor day for thinking on Mary. Whether she lives or dies, I look on her as my wife before God, as surely and solemnly as if we were married. So being, I have the greatest right to look after her, and I cannot yield it even to” —

  “Her father,” said Margaret, finishing his interrupted sentence. “It seems strange that a girl like her should be thrown on the bare world to struggle through so bad an illness. No one seems to know where John Barton is, else I thought of getting Morris to write him a letter telling him about Mary. I wish he was home, that I do!”

  Jem could not echo this wish.

  “Mary’s not bad off for friends where she is,” said he. “I call them friends, though a week ago we none of us knew there were such folks in the world. But being anxious and sorrowful about the same thing makes people friends quicker than anything, I think. She’s like a mother to Mary in her ways; and he bears a good character, as far as I could learn just in that hurry. We’re drawing near home, and I’ve not said my say, Margaret. I want you to look after mother a bit. She’ll not like my going, and I’ve got to break it to her yet. If she takes it very badly, I’ll come back to-morrow night; but if she’s not against it very much, I mean to stay till it’s settled about Mary, one way or the other. Will, you know, will be there, Margaret, to help a bit in doing for mother.”

  Will’s being there made the only objection Margaret saw to this plan. She disliked the idea of seeming to throw herself in his way, and yet she did not like to say anything of this feeling to Jem, who had all along seemed perfectly unconscious of any love-affair, besides his own, in progress.

  So Margaret gave a reluctant consent.

  “If you can just step up to our house to-night, Jem, I’ll put up a few things as may be useful to Mary, and then you can say when you’ll likely be back. If you come home to-morrow night, and Will’s there, perhaps I need not step up?”

  “Yes, Margaret, do! I shan’t leave easy unless you go some time in the day to see mother. I’ll come to-night, though; and now good-bye. Stay! do you think you could just coax poor Will to walk a bit home with you, that I might speak to mother by myself?”

  No! that Margaret could not do. That was expecting too great a sacrifice of bashful feeling.

  But the object was accomplished by Will’s going upstairs immediately on their return to the house, to indulge his mournful thoughts alone. As soon as Jem and his mother were left by themselves, he began on the subject uppermost in his mind.

  “Mother!”

  She put her handkerchief from her eyes, and turned quickly round so as to face him where he stood, thinking what best to say. The little action annoyed him, and he rushed at once into the subject.

  “Mother! I am going back to Liverpool to-morrow morning to see how

  Mary Barton is.”

  “And what’s Mary Barton to thee, that thou shouldst be running after her in that-a-way?”

  “If she lives, she shall be my wedded wife. If she dies — mother, I can’t speak of what I shall feel if she dies.” His voice was choked in his throat.

  For an instant his mother was interested by his words; and then came back the old jealousy of being supplanted in the affections of that son, who had been, as it were, newly born to her, by the escape he had so lately experienced from danger. So she hardened her heart against entertaining any feeling of sympathy; and turned away from the face, which recalled the earnest look of his childhood, when he had come to her in some trouble, sure of help and comfort.

  And coldly she spoke, in those tones which Jem knew and dreaded, even before the meaning they expressed was fully shaped.

  “Thou’rt old enough to please thysel. Old mothers are cast aside, and what they’ve borne forgotten, as soon as a pretty face comes across. I might have thought of that last Tuesday, when I felt as if thou wert all my own, and the judge were some wild animal trying to rend thee from me. I spoke up for thee then; but it’s all forgotten now, I suppose.”

  “Mother! you know all this while, YOU KNOW I can never forget any kindness you’ve ever done for me; and they’ve been many. Why should you think I’ve only room for one love in my heart? I can love you as dearly as ever, and Mary too, as much as man ever loved woman.”

  He awaited a reply. None was vouchsafed.

  “Mother, answer me!” said he, at last.

  “What mun I answer? You asked me no question.”

  “Well! I ask you this now. To-morrow morning I go to Liverpool to see her who is as my wife. Dear mother! will you bless me on my errand? If it please God she recovers, will you take her to you as you would a daughter?”

  She could neither refuse nor assent.

  “Why need you go?” said she querulously, at length. “You’ll be getting in some mischief or another again. Can’t you stop at home quiet with me?”

  Jem got up, and walked about the room in despairing impatience. She would not understand his feelings. At last he stopped right before the place where she was sitting, with an air of injured meekness on her face.

  “Mother! I often think what a good man father was! I’ve often heard you tell of your courting days; and of the accident that befell you, and how ill you were. How long is it ago?”

  “Near upon five-and-twenty years,” said she, with a sigh.

  “You little thought when you were so ill you should live to have such a fi
ne strapping son as I am, did you now?”

  She smiled a little and looked up at him, which was just what he wanted.

  “Thou’rt not so fine a man as thy father was, by a deal,” said she, looking at him with much fondness, notwithstanding her depreciatory words.

  He took another turn or two up and down the room. He wanted to bend the subject round to his own case.

  “Those were happy days when father was alive!”

  “You may say so, lad! Such days as will never come again to me, at any rate.” She sighed sorrowfully.

  “Mother!” said he at last, stopping short, and taking her hand in his with tender affection, “you’d like me to be as happy a man as my father was before me, would not you? You’d like me to have some one to make me as happy as you made father? Now, would you not, dear mother?”

  “I did not make him as happy as I might ha’ done,” murmured she, in a low, sad voice of self-reproach. “Th’ accident gave a jar to my temper it’s never got the better of; and now he’s gone where he can never know how I grieve for having frabbed him as I did.”

  “Nay, mother, we don’t know that!” said Jem, with gentle soothing. “Anyhow, you and father got along with as few rubs as most people. But for HIS sake, dear mother, don’t say me nay, now that I come to you to ask your blessing before setting out to see her, who is to be my wife, if ever woman is; for HIS sake, if not for mine, love her whom I shall bring home to be to me all you were to him: and, mother! I do not ask for a truer or a tenderer heart than yours is, in the long run.”

  The hard look left her face; though her eyes were still averted from Jem’s gaze, it was more because they were brimming over with tears, called forth by his words, than because any angry feeling yet remained. And when his manly voice died away in low pleadings, she lifted up her hands, and bent down her son’s head below the level of her own; and then she solemnly uttered a blessing.

  “God bless thee, Jem, my own dear lad. And may He bless Mary Barton for thy sake.”

  Jem’s heart leapt up, and from this time hope took the place of fear in his anticipations with regard to Mary.

  “Mother! you show your own true self to Mary, and she’ll love you as dearly as I do.”

  So with some few smiles, and some few tears, and much earnest talking, the evening wore away.

  “I must be off to see Margaret. Why, it’s near ten o’clock! Could you have thought it? Now don’t you stop up for me, mother. You and Will go to bed, for you’ve both need of it. I shall be home in an hour.”

  Margaret had felt the evening long and lonely; and was all but giving up the thoughts of Jem’s coming that night, when she heard his step at the door.

  He told her of his progress with his mother; he told her his hopes and was silent on the subject of his fears.

  “To think how sorrow and joy are mixed up together. You’ll date your start in life as Mary’s acknowledged lover from poor Alice Wilson’s burial day. Well! the dead are soon forgotten!”

  “Dear Margaret! But you’re worn-out with your long evening waiting for me. I don’t wonder. But never you, nor any one else, think because God sees fit to call up new interests, perhaps right out of the grave, that therefore the dead are forgotten. Margaret, you yourself can remember our looks, and fancy what we’re like.”

  “Yes! but what has that to do with remembering Alice?”

  “Why, just this. You’re not always trying to think on our faces, and making a labour of remembering; but often, I’ll be bound, when you’re sinking off to sleep, or when you’re very quiet and still, the faces you knew so well when you could see, come smiling before you with loving looks. Or you remember them, without striving after it, and without thinking it’s your duty to keep recalling them. And so it is with them that are hidden from our sight. If they’ve been worthy to be heartily loved while alive, they’ll not be forgotten when dead; it’s against nature. And we need no more be upbraiding ourselves for letting in God’s rays of light upon our sorrow, and no more be fearful of forgetting them, because their memory is not always haunting and taking up our minds, than you need to trouble yourself about remembering your grandfather’s face, or what the stars were like — you can’t forget if you would, what it’s such a pleasure to think about. Don’t fear my forgetting Aunt Alice.”

  “I’m not, Jem; not now, at least; only you seemed so full about

  Mary.”

  “I’ve kept it down so long, remember. How glad Aunt Alice would have been to know that I might hope to have her for my wife! that’s to say, if God spares her!”

  “She would not have known it, even if you could have told her this last fortnight — ever since you went away she’s been thinking always that she was a little child at her mother’s apron-string. She must have been a happy little thing; it was such a pleasure to her to think about those early days, when she lay old and grey on her deathbed.”

  “I never knew any one seem more happy all her life long.”

  “Ay! and how gentle and easy her death was! She thought her mother was near her.”

  They fell into calm thought above those last peaceful, happy hours.

  It struck eleven.

  Jem started up.

  “I should have been gone long ago. Give me the bundle. You’ll not forget my mother. Good-night, Margaret.”

  She let him out and bolted the door behind him. He stood on the steps to adjust some fastening about the bundle. The court, the street, was deeply still. Long ago all had retired to rest on that quiet Sabbath evening. The stars shone down on the silent deserted streets, and the clear soft moonlight fell in bright masses, leaving the steps on which Jem stood in shadow.

  A footfall was heard along the pavement; slow and heavy was the sound. Before Jem had ended his little piece of business, a form had glided into sight; a wan, feeble figure, bearing with evident and painful labour a jug of water from a neighbouring pump. It went before Jem, turned up the court at the corner of which he was standing, passed into the broad, calm light; and there, with bowed head, sinking and shrunk body, Jem recognised John Barton.

  No haunting ghost could have had less of the energy of life in its involuntary motions than he, who, nevertheless, went on with the same measured clockwork tread until the door of his own house was reached. And then he disappeared, and the latch fell feebly to, and made a faint and wavering sound, breaking the solemn silence of the night. Then all again was still.

  For a minute or two Jem stood motionless, stunned by the thoughts which the sight of Mary’s father had called up.

  Margaret did not know he was at home: had he stolen like a thief by dead of night into his own dwelling? Depressed as Jem had often and long seen him, this night there was something different about him still; beaten down by some inward storm, he seemed to grovel along, all self-respect lost and gone.

  Must he be told of Mary’s state? Jem felt he must not; and this for many reasons. He could not be informed of her illness without many other particulars being communicated at the same time, of which it were better he should be kept in ignorance; indeed, of which Mary herself could alone give the full explanation. No suspicion that he was the criminal seemed hitherto to have been excited in the mind of any one. Added to these reasons was Jem’s extreme unwillingness to face him, with the belief in his breast that he, and none other, had done the fearful deed.

  It was true that he was Mary’s father, and as such had every right to be told of all concerning her; but supposing he were, and that he followed the impulse so natural to a father, and wished to go to her, what might be the consequences? Among the mingled feelings she had revealed in her delirium, ay, mingled even with the most tender expressions of love for her father, was a sort of horror of him; a dread of him as a blood-shedder, which seemed to separate him into two persons, — one, the father who had dandled her on his knee, and loved her all her life long; the other, the assassin, the cause of all her trouble and woe.

  If he presented himself before her while this idea o
f his character was uppermost, who might tell the consequence?

  Jem could not, and would not, expose her to any such fearful chance: and to tell the truth, I believe he looked upon her as more his own, to guard from all shadow of injury with most loving care, than as belonging to any one else in this world, though girt with the reverend name of Father, and guiltless of aught that might have lessened such reverence.

  If you think this account of mine confused, of the half-feelings, half-reasons, which passed through Jem’s mind, as he stood gazing on the empty space, where that crushed form had so lately been seen, — if you are perplexed to disentangle the real motives, I do assure you it was from just such an involved set of thoughts that Jem drew the resolution to act as if he had not seen that phantom likeness of John Barton; himself, yet not himself.

  XXXIV. THE RETURN HOME.

  “DIXWELL. Forgiveness! Oh, forgiveness, and a grave!

  MARY. God knows thy heart, my father! and I shudder

  To think what thou perchance hast acted.

  DIXWELL. Oh!

  MARY. No common load of woe is thine, my father.”

  — ELLIOT’S Kerhonah.

  Mary still hovered between life and death when Jem arrived at the house where she lay; and the doctors were as yet unwilling to compromise their wisdom by allowing too much hope to be entertained. But the state of things, if not less anxious, was less distressing than when Jem had quitted her. She lay now in a stupor, which was partly disease, and partly exhaustion after the previous excitement.

  And now Jem found the difficulty which every one who has watched by a sick-bed knows full well; and which is perhaps more insurmountable to men than it is to women, — the difficulty of being patient, and trying not to expect any visible change for long, long hours of sad monotony.

  But after a while the reward came. The laboured breathing became lower and softer, the heavy look of oppressive pain melted away from the face, and a languor that was almost peace took the place of suffering. She slept a natural sleep; and they stole about on tiptoe, and spoke low, and softly, and hardly dared to breathe, however much they longed to sigh out their thankful relief.