Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell

by Elizabeth Gaskell

  Mr. Bell knew something of what would be passing through her mind, and wisely and kindly held his tongue. They drove up to the Lennard Arms; half farm-house, half-inn, standing a little apart from the road, as much as to say, that the host did not so depend on the custom of travellers, as to have to court it by any obtrusiveness; they, rather, must seek him out. The house fronted the village green; and right before it stood an immemorial lime-tree benched all round, in some hidden recesses of whose leafy wealth hung the grim escutcheon of the Lennards. The door of the inn stood wide open, but there was no hospitable hurry to receive the travellers. When the landlady did appear — and they might have abstracted many an article first — she gave them a kind welcome, almost as if they had been invited guests, and apologised for her coming having been so delayed, by saying, that it was hay-time, and the provisions for the men had to be sent a-field, and she had been too busy packing up the baskets to hear the noise of wheels over the road, which, since they had left the highway, ran over soft short turf.

  ‘Why, bless me!’ exclaimed she, as at the end of her apology, a glint of sunlight showed her Margaret’s face, hitherto unobserved in that shady parlour. ‘It’s Miss Hale, Jenny,’ said she, running to the door, and calling to her daughter. ‘Come here, come directly, it’s Miss Hale!’ And then she went up to Margaret, and shook her hands with motherly fondness.

  ‘And how are you all? How’s the Vicar and Miss Dixon? The Vicar above all! God bless him! We’ve never ceased to be sorry that he left.’

  Margaret tried to speak and tell her of her father’s death; of her mother’s it was evident that Mrs. Purkis was aware, from her omission of her name. But she choked in the effort, and could only touch her deep mourning, and say the one word, ‘Papa.’

  ‘Surely, sir, it’s never so!’ said Mrs. Purkis, turning to Mr. Bell for confirmation of the sad suspicion that now entered her mind. ‘There was a gentleman here in the spring — it might have been as long ago as last winter — who told us a deal of Mr. Hale and Miss Margaret; and he said Mrs. Hale was gone, poor lady. But never a word of the Vicar’s being ailing!’

  ‘It is so, however,’ said Mr. Bell. ‘He died quite suddenly, when on a visit to me at Oxford. He was a good man, Mrs. Purkis, and there’s many of us that might be thankful to have as calm an end as his. Come Margaret, my dear! Her father was my oldest friend, and she’s my god-daughter, so I thought we would just come down together and see the old place; and I know of old you can give us comfortable rooms and a capital dinner. You don’t remember me I see, but my name is Bell, and once or twice when the parsonage has been full, I’ve slept here, and tasted your good ale.’

  ‘To be sure; I ask your pardon; but you see I was taken up with Miss Hale. Let me show you to a room, Miss Margaret, where you can take off your bonnet, and wash your face. It’s only this very morning I plunged some fresh-gathered roses head downward in the water-jug, for, thought I, perhaps some one will be coming, and there’s nothing so sweet as spring-water scented by a musk rose or two. To think of the Vicar being dead! Well, to be sure, we must all die; only that gentleman said, he was quite picking up after his trouble about Mrs. Hale’s death.’

  ‘Come down to me, Mrs. Purkis, after you have attended to Miss

  Hale. I want to have a consultation with you about dinner.’

  The little casement window in Margaret’s bed-chamber was almost filled up with rose and vine branches; but pushing them aside, and stretching a little out, she could see the tops of the parsonage chimneys above the trees; and distinguish many a well-known line through the leaves.

  ‘Aye!’ said Mrs. Purkis, smoothing down the bed, and despatching Jenny for an armful of lavender-scented towels, ‘times is changed, miss; our new Vicar has seven children, and is building a nursery ready for more, just out where the arbour and tool-house used to be in old times. And he has had new grates put in, and a plate-glass window in the drawing-room. He and his wife are stirring people, and have done a deal of good; at least they say it’s doing good; if it were not, I should call it turning things upside down for very little purpose. The new Vicar is a teetotaller, miss, and a magistrate, and his wife has a deal of receipts for economical cooking, and is for making bread without yeast; and they both talk so much, and both at a time, that they knock one down as it were, and it’s not till they’re gone, and one’s a little at peace, that one can think that there were things one might have said on one’s own side of the question. He’ll be after the men’s cans in the hay-field, and peeping in; and then there’ll be an ado because it’s not ginger beer, but I can’t help it. My mother and my grandmother before me sent good malt liquor to haymakers; and took salts and senna when anything ailed them; and I must e’en go on in their ways, though Mrs. Hepworth does want to give me comfits instead of medicine, which, as she says, is a deal pleasanter, only I’ve no faith in it. But I must go, miss, though I’m wanting to hear many a thing; I’ll come back to you before long.

  Mr. Bell had strawberries and cream, a loaf of brown bread, and a jug of milk, (together with a Stilton cheese and a bottle of port for his own private refreshment,) ready for Margaret on her coming down stairs; and after this rustic luncheon they set out to walk, hardly knowing in what direction to turn, so many old familiar inducements were there in each.

  ‘Shall we go past the vicarage?’ asked Mr. Bell.

  ‘No, not yet. We will go this way, and make a round so as to come back by it,’ replied Margaret.

  Here and there old trees had been felled the autumn before; or a squatter’s roughly-built and decaying cottage had disappeared. Margaret missed them each and all, and grieved over them like old friends. They came past the spot where she and Mr. Lennox had sketched. The white, lightning-scarred trunk of the venerable beech, among whose roots they had sate down was there no more; the old man, the inhabitant of the ruinous cottage, was dead; the cottage had been pulled down, and a new one, tidy and respectable, had been built in its stead. There was a small garden on the place where the beech-tree had been.

  ‘I did not think I had been so old,’ said Margaret after a pause of silence; and she turned away sighing.

  ‘Yes!’ said Mr. Bell. ‘It is the first changes among familiar things that make such a mystery of time to the young, afterwards we lose the sense of the mysterious. I take changes in all I see as a matter of course. The instability of all human things is familiar to me, to you it is new and oppressive.’

  ‘Let us go on to see little Susan,’ said Margaret, drawing her companion up a grassy road-way, leading under the shadow of a forest glade.

  ‘With all my heart, though I have not an idea who little Susan may be. But I have a kindness for all Susans, for simple Susan’s sake.’

  ‘My little Susan was disappointed when I left without wishing her goodbye; and it has been on my conscience ever since, that I gave her pain which a little more exertion on my part might have prevented. But it is a long way. Are you sure you will not be tired?’

  ‘Quite sure. That is, if you don’t walk so fast. You see, here there are no views that can give one an excuse for stopping to take breath. You would think it romantic to be walking with a person “fat and scant o’ breath” if I were Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Have compassion on my infirmities for his sake.’

  ‘I will walk slower for your own sake. I like you twenty times better than Hamlet.’

  ‘On the principle that a living ass is better than a dead lion?’

  ‘Perhaps so. I don’t analyse my feelings.’

  ‘I am content to take your liking me, without examining too curiously into the materials it is made of. Only we need not walk at a snail’s’ pace.’

  ‘Very well. Walk at your own pace, and I will follow. Or stop still and meditate, like the Hamlet you compare yourself to, if I go too fast.’

  ‘Thank you. But as my mother has not murdered my father, and afterwards married my uncle, I shouldn’t know what to think about, unless it were balancing the chances of our having a well
-cooked dinner or not. What do you think?’

  ‘I am in good hopes. She used to be considered a famous cook as far as Helstone opinion went.’

  ‘But have you considered the distraction of mind produced by all this haymaking?’

  Margaret felt all Mr. Bell’s kindness in trying to make cheerful talk about nothing, to endeavour to prevent her from thinking too curiously about the past. But she would rather have gone over these dear-loved walks in silence, if indeed she were not ungrateful enough to wish that she might have been alone.

  They reached the cottage where Susan’s widowed mother lived.

  Susan was not there. She was gone to the parochial school.

  Margaret was disappointed, and the poor woman saw it, and began

  to make a kind of apology.

  ‘Oh! it is quite right,’ said Margaret. ‘I am very glad to hear it. I might have thought of it. Only she used to stop at home with you.’

  ‘Yes, she did; and I miss her sadly. I used to teach her what little I knew at nights. It were not much to be sure. But she were getting such a handy girl, that I miss her sore. But she’s a deal above me in learning now.’ And the mother sighed.

  ‘I’m all wrong,’ growled Mr. Bell. ‘Don’t mind what I say. I’m a hundred years behind the world. But I should say, that the child was getting a better and simpler, and more natural education stopping at home, and helping her mother, and learning to read a chapter in the New Testament every night by her side, than from all the schooling under the sun.’

  Margaret did not want to encourage him to go on by replying to him, and so prolonging the discussion before the mother. So she turned to her and asked,

  ‘How is old Betty Barnes?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said the woman rather shortly. ‘We’se not friends.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Margaret, who had formerly been the peacemaker of the village.

  ‘She stole my cat.’

  ‘Did she know it was yours?’

  ‘I don’t know. I reckon not.’

  ‘Well! could not you get it back again when you told her it was yours?’

  ‘No! for she’d burnt it.’

  ‘Burnt it!’ exclaimed both Margaret and Mr. Bell.

  ‘Roasted it!’ explained the woman.

  It was no explanation. By dint of questioning, Margaret extracted from her the horrible fact that Betty Barnes, having been induced by a gypsy fortune-teller to lend the latter her husband’s Sunday clothes, on promise of having them faithfully returned on the Saturday night before Goodman Barnes should have missed them, became alarmed by their non-appearance, and her consequent dread of her husband’s anger, and as, according to one of the savage country superstitions, the cries of a cat, in the agonies of being boiled or roasted alive, compelled (as it were) the powers of darkness to fulfil the wishes of the executioner, resort had been had to the charm. The poor woman evidently believed in its efficacy; her only feeling was indignation that her cat had been chosen out from all others for a sacrifice. Margaret listened in horror; and endeavoured in vain to enlighten the woman’s mind; but she was obliged to give it up in despair. Step by step she got the woman to admit certain facts, of which the logical connexion and sequence was perfectly clear to Margaret; but at the end, the bewildered woman simply repeated her first assertion, namely, that ‘it were very cruel for sure, and she should not like to do it; but that there were nothing like it for giving a person what they wished for; she had heard it all her life; but it were very cruel for all that.’ Margaret gave it up in despair, and walked away sick at heart.

  ‘You are a good girl not to triumph over me,’ said Mr. Bell.

  ‘How? What do you mean?’

  ‘I own, I am wrong about schooling. Anything rather than have that child brought up in such practical paganism.’

  ‘Oh! I remember. Poor little Susan! I must go and see her; would you mind calling at the school?’

  ‘Not a bit. I am curious to see something of the teaching she is to receive.’

  They did not speak much more, but thridded their way through many a bosky dell, whose soft green influence could not charm away the shock and the pain in Margaret’s heart, caused by the recital of such cruelty; a recital too, the manner of which betrayed such utter want of imagination, and therefore of any sympathy with the suffering animal.

  The buzz of voices, like the murmur of a hive of busy human bees, made itself heard as soon as they emerged from the forest on the more open village-green on which the school was situated. The door was wide open, and they entered. A brisk lady in black, here, there, and everywhere, perceived them, and bade them welcome with somewhat of the hostess-air which, Margaret remembered, her mother was wont to assume, only in a more soft and languid manner, when any rare visitors strayed in to inspect the school. She knew at once it was the present Vicar’s wife, her mother’s successor; and she would have drawn back from the interview had it been possible; but in an instant she had conquered this feeling, and modestly advanced, meeting many a bright glance of recognition, and hearing many a half-suppressed murmur of ‘It’s Miss Hale.’ The Vicar’s lady heard the name, and her manner at once became more kindly. Margaret wished she could have helped feeling that it also became more patronising. The lady held out a hand to Mr. Bell, with —

  ‘Your father, I presume, Miss Hale. I see it by the likeness. I am sure I am very glad to see you, sir, and so will the Vicar be.’

  Margaret explained that it was not her father, and stammered out the fact of his death; wondering all the time how Mr. Hale could have borne coming to revisit Helstone, if it had been as the Vicar’s lady supposed. She did not hear what Mrs. Hepworth was saying, and left it to Mr. Bell to reply, looking round, meanwhile, for her old acquaintances.

  ‘Ah! I see you would like to take a class, Miss Hale. I know it by myself. First class stand up for a parsing lesson with Miss Hale.’

  Poor Margaret, whose visit was sentimental, not in any degree inspective, felt herself taken in; but as in some way bringing her in contact with little eager faces, once well-known, and who had received the solemn rite of baptism from her father, she sate down, half losing herself in tracing out the changing features of the girls, and holding Susan’s hand for a minute or two, unobserved by all, while the first class sought for their books, and the Vicar’s lady went as near as a lady could towards holding Mr. Bell by the button, while she explained the Phonetic system to him, and gave him a conversation she had had with the Inspector about it.

  Margaret bent over her book, and seeing nothing but that — hearing the buzz of children’s voices, old times rose up, and she thought of them, and her eyes filled with tears, till all at once there was a pause — one of the girls was stumbling over the apparently simple word ‘a,’ uncertain what to call it.

  ‘A, an indefinite article,’ said Margaret, mildly.

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ said the Vicar’s wife, all eyes and ears; ‘but we are taught by Mr. Milsome to call “a” an — who can remember?’

  ‘An adjective absolute,’ said half-a-dozen voices at once. And

  Margaret sate abashed. The children knew more than she did. Mr.

  Bell turned away, and smiled.

  Margaret spoke no more during the lesson. But after it was over, she went quietly round to one or two old favourites, and talked to them a little. They were growing out of children into great girls; passing out of her recollection in their rapid development, as she, by her three years’ absence, was vanishing from theirs. Still she was glad to have seen them all again, though a tinge of sadness mixed itself with her pleasure. When school was over for the day, it was yet early in the summer afternoon; and Mrs. Hepworth proposed to Margaret that she and Mr. Bell should accompany her to the parsonage, and see the — the word ‘improvements’ had half slipped out of her mouth, but she substituted the more cautious term ‘alterations’ which the present Vicar was making. Margaret did not care a straw about seeing the alterations, which jarred upon her fond recollect
ion of what her home had been; but she longed to see the old place once more, even though she shivered away from the pain which she knew she should feel.

  The parsonage was so altered, both inside and out, that the real pain was less than she had anticipated. It was not like the same place. The garden, the grass-plat, formerly so daintily trim that even a stray rose-leaf seemed like a fleck on its exquisite arrangement and propriety, was strewed with children’s things; a bag of marbles here, a hoop there; a straw-hat forced down upon a rose-tree as on a peg, to the destruction of a long beautiful tender branch laden with flowers, which in former days would have been trained up tenderly, as if beloved. The little square matted hall was equally filled with signs of merry healthy rough childhood.

  ‘Ah!’ said Mrs. Hepworth, ‘you must excuse this untidiness, Miss Hale. When the nursery is finished, I shall insist upon a little order. We are building a nursery out of your room, I believe. How did you manage, Miss Hale, without a nursery?’