Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell

by Elizabeth Gaskell

  ‘Nest Gwynn is dead! Nest Gwynn is dead!’ and, crazy with fear, it did not stop until it had hid its head in its mother’s lap. The village was alarmed, and all who were able went in haste towards the well. Poor Nest had often thought she was dying in that dreary hour; had taken fainting for death, and struggled against it; and prayed that God would keep her alive till she could see her lover’s face once more; and when she did see it, white with terror, bending over her, she gave a feeble smile, and let herself faint away into unconsciousness.

  Many a month she lay on her bed unable to move. Sometimes she was delirious, sometimes worn-out into the deepest depression. Through all, her mother watched her with tenderest care. The neighbours would come and offer help. They would bring presents of country dainties; and I do not suppose that there was a better dinner than ordinary cooked in any household in Pen-Morfa parish, but a portion of it was sent to Eleanor Gwynn, if not for her sick daughter, to try and tempt her herself to eat and’ be strengthened; for to no one would she delegate the duty of watching over her child. Edward Williams was for a long time most assiduous in his inquiries and attentions; but by-and-by (ah! you see the dark fate of poor Nest now), he slackened, so little at first that Eleanor blamed herself for her jealousy on her daughter’s behalf, and chid her suspicious heart. But as spring ripened into summer, and Nest was still bedridden, Edward’s coolness was visible to more than the poor mother. The neighbours would have spoken to her about it, but she shrunk from the subject as if they were probing a wound. ‘At any rate,’ thought she, ‘Nest shall be strong before she is told about it. I will tell lies--I shall be forgiven--but I must save my child; and when she is stronger, perhaps I may be able to comfort her. Oh! I wish she would not speak to him so tenderly and trustfully, when she is delirious. I could curse him when she does.’ And then Nest would call for her mother, and Eleanor would go and invent some strange story about the summonses Edward had had to Caernarvon assizes, or to Harlech cattle market. But at last she was driven to her wits’ end; it was three weeks since he had even stopped at the door to inquire, and Eleanor, mad with anxiety about her child, who was silently pining off to death for want of tidings of her lover, put on her cloak, when she had lulled her daughter to sleep one fine June evening, and set off to ‘The End of Time.’ The great plain which stretches out like an amphitheatre, in the half-circle of hills formed by the ranges of Moel Gwynn and the Tre-Madoc Rocks, was all golden-green in the mellow light of sunset. To Eleanor it might have been black with winter frost--she never noticed outward things till she reached ‘The End of Time;’ and there, in the little farm-yard, she was brought to a sense of her present hour and errand by seeing Edward. He was examining some hay, newly stacked; the air was scented by its fragrance, and by the lingering sweetness of the breath of the cows. When Edward turned round at the footstep and saw Eleanor, he coloured and looked confused; however, he came forward to meet her in a cordial manner enough.

  ‘It’s a fine evening,’ said he. ‘How is Nest? But, indeed, your being here is a sign she is better. Won’t you come in and sit down?’ He spoke hurriedly, as if affecting a welcome which he did not feel.

  ‘Thank you. I’ll just take this milking-stool and sit down here. The open air is like balm, after being shut up so long.’

  ‘It is a long time,’ he replied, ‘more than five months.’

  Mrs Gwynn was trembling at heart. She felt an anger which she did not wish to show; for, if by any manifestations of temper or resentment she lessened or broke the waning thread of attachment which bound him to her daughter, she felt she should never forgive herself. She kept inwardly saying, ‘Patience, patience! he may be true, and love her yet;’ but her indignant convictions gave her words the lie.

  ‘It’s a long time, Edward Williams, since you’ve been near us to ask after Nest,’ said she. ‘She may be better, or she may be worse, for aught you know.’ She looked up at him reproachfully, but spoke in a gentle, quiet tone.

  ‘I--you see the hay has been a long piece of work. The weather has been fractious--and a master’s eye is needed. Besides,’ said he, as if he had found the reason for which he sought to account for his absence, ‘I have heard of her from Rowland Jones. I was at the surgery for some horse-medicine--he told me about her:’ and a shade came over his face, as he remembered what the doctor had said. Did he think that shade would escape the mother’s eye?

  ‘You saw Rowland Jones! Oh, man-alive, tell me what he said of my girl! He’ll say nothing to me, but just hems and haws the more I pray him. But you will tell me. You must tell me.’ She stood up and spoke in a tone of command, which his feeling of independence, weakened just then by an accusing conscience, did not enable him to resist. He strove to evade the question, however.

  ‘It was an unlucky day that ever she went to the well!’

  ‘Tell me what the doctor said of my child,’ repeated Mrs Gwynn. ‘Will she live, or will she die?’ He did not dare to disobey the imperious tone in which this question was put.

  ‘Oh, she will live, don’t be afraid. The doctor said she would live.’ He did not mean to lay any peculiar emphasis on the word ‘live,’ but somehow he did, and she, whose every nerve vibrated with anxiety, caught the word.

  ‘She will live!’ repeated she. ‘But there is something behind. Tell me, for I will know. If you won’t say, I’ll go to Rowland Jones to-night, and make him tell me what he has said to you.’

  There had passed something in this conversation between himself and the doctor, which Edward did not wish to have known; and Mrs Gwynn’s threat had the desired effect. But he looked vexed and irritated.

  ‘You have such impatient ways with you, Mrs Gwynn,’ he remonstrated.

  ‘I am a mother asking news of my sick child,’ said she. ‘Go on. What did he say? She’ll live--’ as if giving the clue.

  ‘She’ll live, he has no doubt of that. But he thinks--now don’t clench your hands so--I can’t tell you if you look in that way; you are enough to frighten a man.’

  ‘I’m not speaking,’ said she, in a low, husky tone. ‘Never mind my looks: she’ll live--’

  ‘But she’ll be a cripple for life. There! you would have it out,’ said he, sulkily.

  ‘A cripple for life,’ repeated she, slowly. ‘And I’m one-and-twenty years older than she is!’ She sighed heavily.

  ‘And, as we’re about it, I’ll just tell you what is in my mind,’ said he, hurried and confused. ‘I’ve a deal of cattle; and the farm makes heavy work, as much as an able healthy woman can do. So you see--’ He stopped, wishing her to understand his meaning without words. But she would not. She fixed her dark eyes on him, as if reading his soul, till he flinched under her gaze.

  ‘Well,’ said she, at length, ‘say on. Remember, I’ve a deal of work in me yet, and what strength is mine is my daughter’s.’

  ‘You’re very good. But, altogether, you must be aware, Nest will never be the same as she was.’

  ‘And you’ve not yet sworn in the face of God to take, her for better, for worse; and, as she is worse’--she looked in his face, caught her breath, and went on--’as she is worse, why, you cast her off, not being church-tied to her. Though her body may be crippled, her poor heart is the same--alas!--and full of love for you. Edward, you don’t mean to break it off because of our sorrows. You’re only trying me, I know,’ said she, as if begging him to assure her that her fears were false. ‘But, you see, I’m a foolish woman--a poor, foolish woman--and ready to take fright at a few words.’ She smiled up in his face; but it was a forced, doubting smile, and his face still retained its sullen, dogged aspect.

  ‘Nay, Mrs Gwynn,’ said he, ‘you spoke truth at first. Your own good sense told you Nest would never be fit to be any man’s wife--unless, indeed, she could catch Mr Griffiths of Tynwntyrybwlch; he might keep her a carriage, maybe.’ Edward really did not mean to be unfeeling; but he was obtuse, and wished to carry off his ‘embarrassment by a kind of friendly joke, which he had no idea would sting the poo
r mother as it did. He was startled at her manner.

  ‘Put it in words like a man. Whatever you mean by my child, say it for yourself, and don’t speak as if my good sense had told me anything. I stand here, doubting my own thoughts, cursing my own fears. Don’t be a coward. I ask you whether you and Nest are troth-plight?’

  ‘I am not a coward. Since you ask me, I answer, Nest and I were troth-plight; but we are not. I cannot--no one would expect me to wed a cripple. It’s your own doing I’ve told you now; I had made up my mind, but I should have waited a bit before telling you.’

  ‘Very well,’ said she, and she turned to go away; but her wrath burst the flood-gates, and swept away discretion and forethought. She moved, and stood in the gateway. Her lips parted, but no sound came; with an hysterical motion, she threw her arms suddenly up to heaven, as if bringing down lightning towards the grey old house to which she pointed as they fell, and then she spoke--

  ‘The widow’s child is unfriended. As surely as the Saviour brought the son of a widow from death to life, for her tears and cries, so surely will God and His angels watch over my Nest, and avenge her cruel wrongs.’ She turned away weeping, and wringing her hands.

  Edward went in-doors; he had no more desire to reckon his stores; he sat by the fire, looking gloomily at the red ashes. He might have been there half an hour or more, when some one knocked at the door. He would not speak. He wanted no one’s company. Another knock, sharp and loud. He did not speak. Then the visitor opened the door, and, to his surprise--almost to his affright--Eleanor Gwynn came in.

  ‘I knew you were here. I knew you could not go out into the clear, holy night as if nothing had happened. Oh! did I curse you? If I did, I beg you to forgive me; and I will try and ask the Almighty to bless you, if you will but have a little mercy--a very little. It will kill my Nest if she knows the truth now--she is so very weak. Why, she cannot feed herself, she is so low and feeble. You would not wish to kill her, I think, Edward!’ She looked at him, as if expecting an answer; but he did not speak. She went down on her knees on the flags by him.

  ‘You will give me a little time, Edward, to get her strong, won’t you, now? I ask it on my bended knees! Perhaps, if I promise never to curse you again, you will come sometimes to see her, till she is well enough to know how all is over, and her heart’s hopes crushed. Only say you’ll come for a month or so, as if you still loved her--the poor cripple, forlorn of the world. I’ll get her strong, and not tax you long.’ Her tears fell too fast for her to go on.

  ‘Get up, Mrs Gwynn,’ Edward said. ‘Don’t kneel to me. I have no objection to come and see Nest, now and then, so that all is clear between you and me. Poor thing! I’m sorry, as it happens, she’s so taken up with the thought of me.’

  ‘It was likely, was not it? and you to have been her husband before this time, if--oh, miserable me! to let my child go and dim her bright life! But you’ll forgive me, and come sometimes, just for a little quarter of an hour, once or twice a week. Perhaps she’ll be asleep sometimes when you call, and then, you know, you need not come in. If she were not so ill, I’d never ask you.’

  So low and humble was the poor widow brought, through her exceeding love for her daughter.

  CHAPTER II

  Nest revived during the warm summer weather. Edward came to see her, and stayed the allotted quarter of an hour; but he dared not look her in the face. She was, indeed, a cripple: one leg was much shorter than the other, and she halted on a crutch. Her face, formerly so brilliant in colour, was wan and pale with suffering; the bright roses were gone, never to return. Her large eyes were sunk deep down in their hollow, cavernous sockets; but the light was in them still, when Edward came. Her mother dreaded her returning strength--dreaded, yet desired it; for the heavy burden of her secret was most oppressive at times, and she thought Edward was beginning to weary of his enforced attentions. One October evening she told her the truth. She even compelled her rebellious heart to take the cold, reasoning side of the question; and she told her child that her disabled frame was a disqualification for ever becoming a farmer’s wife. She spoke hardly, because her inner agony and sympathy was such, she dared not trust herself to express the feelings that were rending her. But Nest turned away from cold reason; she revolted from her mother; she revolted from the world. She bound her sorrow tight up in her breast, to corrode and fester there.

  Night after night, her mother heard her cries and moans--more pitiful, by far, than those wrung from her by bodily pain a year before; and night after night, if her mother spoke to soothe, she proudly denied the existence of any pain but what was physical, and consequent upon her accident.

  ‘If she would but open her sore heart to me--to me, her mother,’ Eleanor wailed forth in prayer to God, ‘I would be content. Once it was enough to have my Nest all my own. Then came love, and I knew it would never be as before; and then I thought the grief I felt, when Edward spoke to me, was as sharp a sorrow as could be; but this present grief, O Lord, my God, is worst of all; and Thou only, Thou, canst help!’

  When Nest grew as strong as she was ever likely to be on earth, she was anxious to have as much labour as she could bear. She would not allow her mother to spare her anything. Hard work--bodily fatigue--she seemed to crave. She was glad when she was stunned by exhaustion into a dull insensibility of feeling. She was almost fierce when her mother, in those first months of convalescence, performed the household tasks which had formerly been hers; but she shrank from going out of doors. Her mother thought that she was unwilling to expose her changed appearance to the neighbours’ remarks, but Nest was not afraid of that; she was afraid of their pity, as being one deserted and cast off. If Eleanor gave way before her daughter’s imperiousness, and sat by while Nest ‘tore’ about her work with the vehemence of a bitter heart, Eleanor could have cried, but she durst not; tears, or any mark of commiseration, irritated the crippled girl so much, she even drew away from caresses. Everything was to go on as it had been before she had known Edward; and so it did, outwardly; but they trod carefully, as if the ground on which they moved was hollow--deceptive. There was no more careless ease, every word was guarded, and every action planned. It was a dreary life to both. Once, Eleanor brought in a little baby, a neighbour’s child, to try and tempt Nest out of herself, by her old love of children. Nest’s pale face flushed as she saw the innocent child in her mother’s arms; and, for a moment, she made as if she would have taken it; but then she turned away, and hid her face behind her apron, and murmured, ‘I shall never have a child to lie in my breast, and call me mother!’ In a minute she arose, with compressed and tightened lips, and went about her household work, without her noticing the cooing baby again, till Mrs Gwynn, heart-sick at the failure of her little plan, took it back to its parents.

  One day the news ran through Pen-Morfa that Edward Williams was about to be married. Eleanor had long expected this intelligence. It came upon her like no new thing, but it was the filling-up of her cup of woe. She could not tell Nest. She sat listlessly in the house, and dreaded that each neighbour who came in would speak about the village news. At last some one did. Nest looked round from her employment, and talked of the event with a kind of cheerful curiosity as to the particulars, which made her informant go away, and tell others that Nest had quite left off caring for Edward Williams. But when the door was shut, and Eleanor and she were left alone, Nest came and stood before her weeping mother like a stern accuser.

  ‘Mother, why did not you let me die? Why did you keep me alive for this?’ Eleanor could not speak, but she put her arms out towards her girl. Nest turned away, and Eleanor cried aloud in her soreness of spirit. Nest came again.

  ‘Mother, I was wrong. You did your best. I don’t know how it is I am so hard and cold. I wish I had died when I was a girl, and had a feeling heart.’

  ‘Don’t speak so, my child. God has afflicted you sore, and your hardness of heart is but for a time. Wait a little. Don’t reproach yourself, my poor Nest. I understand your ways. I
don’t mind them, love. The feeling heart will come back to you in time. Anyways, don’t think you’re grieving me; because, love, that may sting you when I’m gone; and I’m not grieved, my darling. Most times, we’re very cheerful, I think.’

  After this, mother and child were drawn more together. But Eleanor had received her death from, these sorrowful, hurrying events. She did not conceal the truth from herself, nor did she pray to live, as some months ago she had done, for her child’s sake; she had found out that she had no power to console the poor wounded heart. It seemed to her as if her prayers had been of no avail; and then she blamed herself for this thought.

  There are many Methodist preachers in this part of Wales. There was a certain old man, named David Hughes, who was held in peculiar reverence because he had known the great John Wesley. He had been captain of a Caernarvon slate-vessel; he had traded in the Mediterranean, and had seen strange sights. In those early days (to use his own expression) he had lived without God in the world; but he went to mock John Wesley, and was converted by the white-haired patriarch, and remained to pray. Afterwards he became one of the earnest, self-denying, much-abused band of itinerant preachers who went forth under Wesley’s direction, to spread abroad a more earnest and practical spirit of religion. His rambles and travels were of use to him. They extended his knowledge of the circumstances in which men are sometimes placed, and enlarged his sympathy with the tried and tempted. His sympathy, combined with the thoughtful experience of fourscore years, made him cognizant of many of the strange secrets of humanity; and when younger preachers upbraided the hard hearts they met with, and despaired of the sinners, he ‘suffered long, and was kind.’

  When Eleanor Gwynn lay low on her death-bed, David Hughes came to Pen-Morfa. He knew her history, and sought her out. To him she imparted the feelings I have described.

  ‘I have lost my faith, David. The tempter has come, and I have yielded. I doubt if my prayers have been heard. Day and night have I prayed that I might comfort my child in her great sorrow; but God has not heard me. She has turned away from me, and refused my poor love. I wish to die now; but I have lost my faith, and have no more pleasure in the thought of going to God. What must I do, David?’