Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell

by Elizabeth Gaskell

  With bent heads and spent strength, those who carried the coffin moved on; behind came the poor old gardener, a brown-black funeral cloak thrown over his homely dress, and supporting his wife with steps scarcely less feeble than her own. He had come to church that afternoon, with a promise to her that he would return to lead her to the funeral of her firstborn; for he felt, in his sore perplexed heart, full of indignation and dumb anger, as if he must go and hear something which should exorcize the unwonted longing for revenge that disturbed his grief, and made him conscious of that great blank of consolation which faithfulness produces. And for the time he was faithless. How came God to permit such cruel injustice of man? Permitting it, He could not be good. Then what was life, and what was death, but woe and despair? The beautiful solemn words of the ritual had done him good, and restored much of his faith. Though he could not understand why such sorrow had befallen him any more than before, he had come back to something of his childlike trust; he kept saying to himself in a whisper, as he mounted the weary steps, ‘It is the Lord’s doing’; and the repetition soothed him unspeakably. Behind this old couple followed their children, grown men and women, come from distant place or farmhouse service; the servants at the vicarage, and many a neighbour, anxious to show their sympathy, and most of the sailors from the crews of the vessels in port, joined in procession, and followed the dead body into the church.

  There was too great a crowd immediately within the door for Sylvia and Molly to go in again, and they accordingly betook themselves to the place where the deep grave was waiting, wide and hungry, to receive its dead. There, leaning against the headstones all around, were many standing — looking over the broad and placid sea, and turned to the soft salt air which blew on their hot eyes and rigid faces; for no one spoke of all that number. They were thinking of the violent death of him over whom the solemn words were now being said in the gray old church, scarcely out of their hearing, had not the sound been broken by the measured lapping of the tide far beneath.

  Suddenly every one looked round towards the path from the churchyard steps. Two sailors were supporting a ghastly figure that, with feeble motions, was drawing near the open grave.

  ‘It’s t’ specksioneer as tried to save him! It’s him as was left for dead!’ the people murmured round.

  ‘It’s Charley Kinraid, as I’m a sinner!’ said Molly, starting forward to greet her cousin.

  But as he came on, she saw that all his strength was needed for the mere action of walking. The sailors, in their strong sympathy, had yielded to his earnest entreaty, and carried him up the steps, in order that he might see the last of his messmate. They placed him near the grave, resting against a stone; and he was hardly there before the vicar came forth, and the great crowd poured out of the church, following the body to the grave.

  Sylvia was so much wrapt up in the solemnity of the occasion, that she had no thought to spare at the first moment for the pale and haggard figure opposite; much less was she aware of her cousin Philip, who now singling her out for the first time from among the crowd, pressed to her side, with an intention of companionship and protection.

  As the service went on, ill-checked sobs rose from behind the two girls, who were among the foremost in the crowd, and by-and-by the cry and the wail became general. Sylvia’s tears rained down her face, and her distress became so evident that it attracted the attention of many in that inner circle. Among others who noticed it, the specksioneer’s hollow eyes were caught by the sight of the innocent blooming childlike face opposite to him, and he wondered if she were a relation; yet, seeing that she bore no badge of mourning, he rather concluded that she must have been a sweetheart of the dead man.

  And now all was over: the rattle of the gravel on the coffin; the last long, lingering look of friends and lovers; the rosemary sprigs had been cast down by all who were fortunate enough to have brought them — and oh! how much Sylvia wished she had remembered this last act of respect — and slowly the outer rim of the crowd began to slacken and disappear.

  Now Philip spoke to Sylvia.

  ‘I never dreamt of seeing you here. I thought my aunt always went to Kirk Moorside.’

  ‘I came with Molly Corney,’ said Sylvia. ‘Mother is staying at home with feyther.’

  ‘How’s his rheumatics?’ asked Philip.

  But at the same moment Molly took hold of Sylvia’s hand, and said —

  ‘A want t’ get round and speak to Charley. Mother ‘ll be main and glad to hear as he’s getten out; though, for sure, he looks as though he’d ha’ been better in ‘s bed. Come, Sylvia.’

  And Philip, fain to keep with Sylvia, had to follow the two girls close up to the specksioneer, who was preparing for his slow laborious walk back to his lodgings. He stopped on seeing his cousin.

  ‘Well, Molly,’ said he, faintly, putting out his hand, but his eye passing her face to look at Sylvia in the background, her tear-stained face full of shy admiration of the nearest approach to a hero she had ever seen.

  ‘Well, Charley, a niver was so taken aback as when a saw yo’ theere, like a ghost, a-standin’ agin a gravestone. How white and wan yo’ do look!’

  ‘Ay!’ said he, wearily, ‘wan and weak enough.’

  ‘But I hope you’re getting better, sir,’ said Sylvia, in a low voice, longing to speak to him, and yet wondering at her own temerity.

  ‘Thank you, my lass. I’m o’er th’ worst.’

  He sighed heavily.

  Philip now spoke.

  ‘We’re doing him no kindness a-keeping him standing here i’ t’ night-fall, and him so tired.’ And he made as though he would turn away. Kinraid’s two sailor friends backed up Philip’s words with such urgency, that, somehow, Sylvia thought they had been to blame in speaking to him, and blushed excessively with the idea.

  ‘Yo’ll come and be nursed at Moss Brow, Charley,’ said Molly; and Sylvia dropped her little maidenly curtsey, and said, ‘Good-by;’ and went away, wondering how Molly could talk so freely to such a hero; but then, to be sure, he was a cousin, and probably a sweetheart, and that would make a great deal of difference, of course.

  Meanwhile her own cousin kept close by her side.

  CHAPTER VII

  TETE-A-TETE. — THE WILL

  ‘And now tell me all about th’ folk at home?’ said Philip, evidently preparing to walk back with the girls. He generally came to Haytersbank every Sunday afternoon, so Sylvia knew what she had to expect the moment she became aware of his neighbourhood in the churchyard.

  ‘My feyther’s been sadly troubled with his rheumatics this week past; but he’s a vast better now, thank you kindly.’ Then, addressing herself to Molly, she asked, ‘Has your cousin a doctor to look after him?’

  ‘Ay, for sure!’ said Molly, quickly; for though she knew nothing about the matter, she was determined to suppose that her cousin had everything becoming an invalid as well as a hero. ‘He’s well-to-do, and can afford everything as he needs,’ continued she. ‘His feyther’s left him money, and he were a farmer out up in Northumberland, and he’s reckoned such a specksioneer as never, never was, and gets what wage he asks for and a share on every whale he harpoons beside.’

  ‘I reckon he’ll have to make himself scarce on this coast for awhile, at any rate,’ said Philip.

  ‘An’ what for should he?’ asked Molly, who never liked Philip at the best of times, and now, if he was going to disparage her cousin in any way, was ready to take up arms and do battle.

  ‘Why, they do say as he fired the shot as has killed some o’ the men-o’-war’s men, and, of course, if he has, he’ll have to stand his trial if he’s caught.’

  ‘What lies people do say!’ exclaimed Molly. ‘He niver killed nought but whales, a’ll be bound; or, if he did, it were all right and proper as he should, when they were for stealing him an’ all t’ others, and did kill poor Darley as we come fra’ seeming buried. A suppose, now yo’re such a Quaker that, if some one was to break through fra’ t’ other side o’ this d
yke and offer for to murder Sylvia and me, yo’d look on wi’ yo’r hands hanging by yo’r side.’

  ‘But t’ press-gang had law on their side, and were doing nought but what they’d warrant for.’

  ‘Th’ tender’s gone away, as if she were ashamed o’ what she’d done,’ said Sylvia, ‘and t’ flag’s down fra’ o’er the Randyvowse. There ‘ll be no more press-ganging here awhile.’

  ‘No; feyther says,’ continued Molly, ‘as they’ve made t’ place too hot t’ hold ‘em, coming so strong afore people had getten used to their ways o’ catchin’ up poor lads just come fra’ t’ Greenland seas. T’ folks ha’ their blood so up they’d think no harm o’ fighting ‘em i’ t’ streets — ay, and o’ killing ‘em, too, if they were for using fire-arms, as t’ Aurora’s men did.’

  ‘Women is so fond o’ bloodshed,’ said Philip; ‘for t’ hear you talk, who’d ha’ thought you’d just come fra’ crying ower the grave of a man who was killed by violence? I should ha’ thought you’d seen enough of what sorrow comes o’ fighting. Why, them lads o’ t’ Aurora as they say Kinraid shot down had fathers and mothers, maybe, a looking out for them to come home.’

  ‘I don’t think he could ha’ killed them,’ said Sylvia; ‘he looked so gentle.’

  But Molly did not like this half-and-half view of the case.

  ‘A dare say he did kill ‘em dead; he’s not one to do things by halves. And a think he served ‘em reet, that’s what a do.’

  ‘Is na’ this Hester, as serves in Foster’s shop?’ asked Sylvia, in a low voice, as a young woman came through a stile in the stone wall by the roadside, and suddenly appeared before them.

  ‘Yes,’ said Philip. ‘Why, Hester, where have you been?’ he asked, as they drew near.

  Hester reddened a little, and then replied, in her slow, quiet way —

  ‘I’ve been sitting with Betsy Darley — her that is bed-ridden. It were lonesome for her when the others were away at the burying.’

  And she made as though she would have passed; but Sylvia, all her sympathies alive for the relations of the murdered man, wanted to ask more questions, and put her hand on Hester’s arm to detain her a moment. Hester suddenly drew back a little, reddened still more, and then replied fully and quietly to all Sylvia asked.

  In the agricultural counties, and among the class to which these four persons belonged, there is little analysis of motive or comparison of characters and actions, even at this present day of enlightenment. Sixty or seventy years ago there was still less. I do not mean that amongst thoughtful and serious people there was not much reading of such books as Mason on Self-Knowledge and Law’s Serious Call, or that there were not the experiences of the Wesleyans, that were related at class-meeting for the edification of the hearers. But, taken as a general ride, it may be said that few knew what manner of men they were, compared to the numbers now who are fully conscious of their virtues, qualities, failings, and weaknesses, and who go about comparing others with themselves — not in a spirit of Pharisaism and arrogance, but with a vivid self-consciousness that more than anything else deprives characters of freshness and originality.

  To return to the party we left standing on the high-raised footway that ran alongside of the bridle-road to Haytersbank. Sylvia had leisure in her heart to think ‘how good Hester is for sitting with the poor bed-ridden sister of Darley!’ without having a pang of self-depreciation in the comparison of her own conduct with that she was capable of so fully appreciating. She had gone to church for the ends of vanity, and remained to the funeral for curiosity and the pleasure of the excitement. In this way a modern young lady would have condemned herself, and therefore lost the simple, purifying pleasure of admiration of another.

  Hester passed onwards, going down the hill towards the town. The other three walked slowly on. All were silent for a few moments, then Sylvia said —

  ‘How good she is!’

  And Philip replied with ready warmth, —

  ‘Yes, she is; no one knows how good but us, who live in the same house wi’ her.’

  ‘Her mother is an old Quakeress, bean’t she?’ Molly inquired.

  ‘Alice Rose is a Friend, if that is what you mean,’ said Philip.

  ‘Well, well! some folk’s so particular. Is William Coulson a Quaker, by which a mean a Friend?’

  ‘Yes; they’re all on ‘em right-down good folk.’

  ‘Deary me! What a wonder yo’ can speak to such sinners as Sylvia and me, after keepin’ company with so much goodness,’ said Molly, who had not yet forgiven Philip for doubting Kinraid’s power of killing men. ‘Is na’ it, Sylvia?’

  But Sylvia was too highly strung for banter. If she had not been one of those who went to mock, but remained to pray, she had gone to church with the thought of the cloak-that-was-to-be uppermost in her mind, and she had come down the long church stair with life and death suddenly become real to her mind, the enduring sea and hills forming a contrasting background to the vanishing away of man. She was full of a solemn wonder as to the abiding-place of the souls of the dead, and a childlike dread lest the number of the elect should be accomplished before she was included therein. How people could ever be merry again after they had been at a funeral, she could not imagine; so she answered gravely, and slightly beside the question:

  ‘I wonder if I was a Friend if I should be good?’

  ‘Gi’ me your red cloak, that’s all, when yo’ turn Quaker; they’ll none let thee wear scarlet, so it ‘ll be of no use t’ thee.’

  ‘I think thou’rt good enough as thou art,’ said Philip, tenderly — at least as tenderly as he durst, for he knew by experience that it did not do to alarm her girlish coyness. Either one speech or the other made Sylvia silent; neither was accordant to her mood of mind; so perhaps both contributed to her quietness.

  ‘Folk say William Coulson looks sweet on Hester Rose,’ said Molly, always up in Monkshaven gossip. It was in the form of an assertion, but was said in the tone of a question, and as such Philip replied to it.

  ‘Yes, I think he likes her a good deal; but he’s so quiet, I never feel sure. John and Jeremiah would like the match, I’ve a notion.’

  And now they came to the stile which had filled Philip’s eye for some minutes past, though neither of the others had perceived they were so near it; the stile which led to Moss Brow from the road into the fields that sloped down to Haystersbank. Here they would leave Molly, and now would begin the delicious tete-a-tete walk, which Philip always tried to make as lingering as possible. To-day he was anxious to show his sympathy with Sylvia, as far as he could read what was passing in her mind; but how was he to guess the multitude of tangled thoughts in that unseen receptacle? A resolution to be good, if she could, and always to be thinking on death, so that what seemed to her now as simply impossible, might come true — that she might ‘dread the grave as little as her bed’; a wish that Philip were not coming home with her; a wonder if the specksioneer really had killed a man, an idea which made her shudder; yet from the awful fascination about it, her imagination was compelled to dwell on the tall, gaunt figure, and try to recall the wan countenance; a hatred and desire of revenge on the press-gang, so vehement that it sadly militated against her intention of trying to be good; all these notions, and wonders, and fancies, were whirling about in Sylvia’s brain, and at one of their promptings she spoke, —