Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell

by Elizabeth Gaskell

  She hung upon his answer; and it was long in coming.

  ‘I am weary of earth,’ said she, mournfully, ‘and can I find rest in death even, leaving my child desolate and broken-hearted?’

  ‘Eleanor,’ said David, ‘where you go, all things will be made clear; and you will learn to thank God for the end of what now seems grievous and heavy to be borne. Do you think your agony has been greater than the awful agony in the Garden--or your prayers more earnest than that which He prayed in that hour when the great drops of blood ran down his face like sweat? We know that God heard Him, although no answer came to Him through the dread silence of that night. God’s times are not our times. I have lived eighty and one years, and never yet have I known an earnest prayer fall to the ground unheeded. In an unknown way, and when no one looked for it, maybe, the answer came; a fuller, more satisfying answer than heart could conceive of, although it might be different to what was expected. Sister, you are going where in His light you will see light; you will learn there that in very faithfulness he has afflicted you!’

  ‘Go on--you strengthen me,’ said she.

  After David Hughes left that day, Eleanor was calm as one already dead, and past mortal strife. Nest was awed by the change. No more passionate weeping--no more sorrow in the voice; though it was low and weak, it sounded with a sweet composure. Her last look was a smile; her last word a blessing.

  Nest, tearless, streaked the poor worn body. She laid a plate with salt upon it on the breast, and lighted candles for the head and feet. It was an old Welsh custom; but when David Hughes came in, the sight carried him back to the time when he had seen the chapels in some old Catholic cathedral. Nest sat gazing on the dead with dry, hot eyes.

  ‘She is dead,’ said David, solemnly; ‘she died in Christ. Let us bless God, my child. He giveth and He taketh away.’

  ‘She is dead,’ said Nest, ‘my mother is dead. No one loves me now.

  She spoke as if she were thinking aloud, for she did not look at David, or ask him to be seated.

  ‘No one loves you now? No human creature, you mean. You are not yet fit to be spoken to concerning God’s infinite love. I, like you, will speak of love for human creatures. I tell you if no one loves you, it is time for you to begin to love.’ He spoke almost severely (if David Hughes ever did); for, to tell the truth, he was repelled by her hard rejection of her mother’s tenderness, about which the neighbours had told him.

  ‘Begin to love!’ said she, her eyes flashing. ‘Have I not loved? Old man, you are dim, and worn-out. You do not remember what love is.’ She spoke with a scornful kind of pitying endurance. ‘I will tell you how I have loved by telling you the change it has wrought in me. I was once the beautiful Nest Gwynn; I am now a cripple, a poor, wan-faced cripple, old before my time. That is a change, at least people think so.’ She paused and then spoke lower. ‘I tell you, David Hughes, that outward change is as nothing compared to the change in my nature caused by the love I have felt--and have had rejected. I was gentle once, and if you spoke a tender word, my heart came towards you as natural as a little child goes to its mammy. I never spoke roughly, even to the dumb creatures, for I had a kind feeling for all. Of late (since I loved, old man), I have been cruel in my thoughts to every one. I have turned away from tenderness with bitter indifference. Listen!’ she spoke in a hoarse whisper. ‘I will own it. I have spoken hardly to her,’ pointing towards the corpse,--’her who was ever patient, and full of love for me. She did not know,’ she muttered, ‘she is gone to the grave without knowing how I loved her--I had such strange, mad, stubborn pride in me.’

  ‘Come back, mother! Come back,’ said she, crying wildly to the still, solemn corpse; ‘come back as a spirit or a ghost--only come back, that I may tell you how I have loved you.’

  But the dead never come back.

  The passionate adjuration ended in tears--the first she had shed. When they ceased, or were absorbed into long quivering sobs, David knelt down. Nest did not kneel, but bowed her head. He prayed, while his own tears fell fast. He rose up. They were both calm.

  ‘Nest,’ said he, ‘your love has been the love of youth--passionate, wild, natural to youth. Henceforward, you must love like Christ, without thought of self, or wish for return. You must take the sick and the weary to your heart, and love them. That love will lift you up above the storms of the world into God’s own peace. The very vehemence of your nature proves that you are capable of this. I do not pity you. You do not require pity. You are powerful enough to trample down your own sorrows into a blessing for others; and to others you will be a blessing. I see it before you, I see in it the answer to your mother’s prayer.’

  The old man’s dim eyes glittered as if they saw a vision; the fire-light sprang up, and glinted on his long white hair. Nest was awed as if she saw a prophet, and a prophet he was to her.

  When next David Hughes came to Pen-Morfa, he asked about Nest Gwynn, with a hovering doubt as to the answer. The inn-folk told him she was living still in the cottage, which was now her own.

  ‘But would you believe it, David,’ said Mrs Thomas, ‘she has gone and taken Mary Williams to live with her? You remember Mary Williams, I’m sure.’

  No! David Hughes remembered no Mary Williams at Pen-Morfa.

  ‘You must have seen her, for I know you’ve called at John Griffiths’, where the parish boarded her?’

  ‘You don’t mean the half-witted woman--the poor crazy creature?’

  ‘But I do!’ said Mrs Thomas.

  ‘I have seen her sure enough, but I never thought of learning her name. And Nest Gwynn has taken her to live with her.’

  ‘Yes! I thought I should surprise you. She might have had many a decent girl for companion. My own niece, her that is an orphan, would have gone, and been thankful. Besides, Mary Williams is a regular savage at times: John Griffiths says there were days when he used to beat her till she howled again, and yet she would not do as he told her. Nay, once, he says, if he had not seen her eyes glare like a wild beast, from under the shadow of the table where she had taken shelter, and got pretty quickly out of her way, she would have flown upon him, and throttled him. He gave Nest fair warning of what she must expect, and he thinks some day she will be found murdered.’

  David Hughes thought a while. ‘How came Nest to take her to live with her?’ asked he.

  ‘Well! Folk say John Griffiths did not give her enough to eat. Half-wits, they tell me, take more to feed them than others, and Eleanor Gwynn had given her oat-cake, and porridge a time or two, and most likely spoken kindly to her (you know Eleanor spoke kind to all), so some months ago, when John Griffiths had been beating her, and keeping her without food to try and tame her, she ran away, and came to Nest’s cottage in the dead of night, all shivering and starved, for she did not know Eleanor was dead, and thought to meet with kindness from her, I’ve no doubt; and Nest remembered how her mother used to feed and comfort the poor idiot, and made her some gruel, and wrapped her up by the fire. And, in the morning, when John Griffiths came in search of Mary, he found her with Nest, and Mary wailed so piteously at the sight of him, that Nest went to the parish officers, and offered to take her to board with her for the same money they gave to him. John says he was right glad to be off his bargain.’

  David Hughes knew there was a kind of remorse which sought relief in the performance of the most difficult and repugnant tasks. He thought he could understand how, in her bitter repentance for her conduct towards her mother, Nest had taken in the first helpless creature that came seeking shelter in her name. It was not what he would have chosen, but he knew it was God that had sent the poor wandering idiot there.

  He went to see Nest the next morning. As he drew near the cottage--it was summer time, and the doors and windows were all open--he heard an angry passionate kind of sound that was scarcely human. That sound prevented his approach from being heard; and, standing at the threshold, he saw poor Mary Williams pacing backwards and forwards in some wild mood. Nest, cripple as sh
e was, was walking with her, speaking low soothing words, till the pace was slackened, and time and breathing was given to put her arm around the crazy woman’s neck, and soothe her by this tender caress into the quiet luxury of tears--tears which give the hot brain relief. Then David Hughes came in. His first words, as he took off his hat, standing on the lintel, were--’The peace of God be upon this house.’ Neither he nor Nest recurred to the past, though solemn recollections filled their minds. Before he went, all three knelt and prayed; for, as Nest told him, some mysterious influence of peace came over the poor half-wit’s mind, when she heard the holy words of prayer; and often when she felt a paroxysm coming on, she would kneel and repeat a homily rapidly over, as if it were a charm to scare away the Demon in possession; sometimes, indeed, the control over herself requisite for this effort was enough to dispel the fluttering burst. When David rose up to go, he drew Nest to the door.

  ‘You are not afraid, my child?’ asked he.

  ‘No,’ she replied. ‘She is often very good and quiet. When she is not, I can bear it.’

  ‘I shall see your face on earth no more,’ said he. ‘God bless you!’ He went on his way. Not many weeks after, David Hughes was borne to his grave.

  The doors of Nest’s heart were opened--opened wide by the love she grew to feel for crazy Mary, so helpless, so friendless, so dependent upon her. Mary loved her back again, as a dumb animal loves its blind master. It was happiness enough to be near her. In general, she was only too glad to do what she was bidden by Nest. But there were times when Mary was overpowered by the glooms and fancies of her poor disordered brain. Fearful times! No one knew how fearful. On those days, Nest warned the little children who loved to come and play around her, that they must not visit the house. The signal was a piece of white linen hung out of a side window. On those days, the sorrowful and sick waited in vain for the sound of Nest’s lame approach. But what she had to endure was only known to God, for she never complained. If she had given up the charge of Mary, or if the neighbours had risen, out of love and care for her life, to compel such a step, she knew what hard curses and blows, what starvation and misery, would await the poor creature.

  She told of Mary’s docility, and her affection, and her innocent, little sayings; but she never told the details of the occasional days of wild disorder, and driving insanity.

  Nest grew old before her time, in consequence of her accident. She knew that she was as old at fifty as many are at seventy. She knew it partly by the vividness with which the remembrance of the days of her youth came back to her mind, while the events of yesterday were dim and forgotten. She dreamt of her girlhood and youth. In sleep, she was once more the beautiful Nest Gwynn, the admired of all beholders, the light-hearted girl, beloved by her mother. Little circumstances connected with those early days, forgotten since the very time when they occurred, came back to her mind, in her waking hours. She had a scar on the palm of her left hand, occasioned by the fall of a branch of a tree, when she was a child. It had not pained her since the first two days after the accident; but now it began to hurt her slightly; and clear in her ears was the crackling sound of the treacherous, rending wood; distinct before her rose the presence of her mother, tenderly binding up the wound. With these remembrances came a longing desire to see the beautiful, fatal well once more before her death. She had never gone so far since the day when, by her fall there, she lost love and hope, and her bright glad youth. She yearned to look upon its waters once again. This desire waxed as her life waned. She told it to poor crazy Mary.

  ‘Mary!’ said she, ‘I want to go to the Rock Well. If you will help me, I can manage it. There used to be many a stone in the Dol Mawr on which I could sit and rest. We will go to-morrow morning before folks are astir.’

  Mary answered briskly, ‘Up, up! To the Rock Well. Mary will go. Mary will go.’ All day long she kept muttering to herself, ‘Mary will go.’

  Nest had the happiest dream that night. Her mother stood beside her--not in the flesh, but in the bright glory of a blessed spirit. And Nest was no longer young--neither was she old--’they reckon not by days, nor years, where she was gone to dwell;’ and her mother stretched out her arms to her with a calm, glad look of welcome. She awoke; the woodlark was singing in the near copse--the little birds were astir, and rustling in their leafy nests. Nest arose, and called Mary. The two set out through the quiet lane. They went along slowly and silently. With many a pause they crossed the broad Dol Mawr, and carefully descended the sloping stones, on which no trace remained of the hundreds of feet that had passed over them since Nest was last there. The clear water sparkled and quivered in the early sunlight, the shadows of the birch-leaves were stirred on the ground; the ferns--Nest could have believed that they were the very same ferns which she had seen thirty years before--hung wet and dripping where the water overflowed--a thrush chanted matins from a hollybush near--and the running stream made a low, soft, sweet accompaniment. All was the same. Nature was as fresh and young as ever. It might have been yesterday that Edward Williams had overtaken her, and told her his love--the thought of his words--his handsome looks--(he was a gray, hard-featured man by this time), and then she recalled the fatal wintry morning when joy and youth had fled; and as she remembered that faintness of pain, a new, a real faintness--no echo of the memory--came over her. She leant her back against a rock, without a moan or sigh, and died! She found immortality by the well-side, instead of her fragile, perishing youth. She was so calm and placid that Mary (who had been dipping her fingers in the well, to see the waters drop off in the gleaming sunlight), thought she was asleep, and for some time continued her amusement in silence. At last, she turned, and said,--

  ‘Mary is tired. Mary wants to go home.’ Nest did not speak, though the idiot repeated her plaintive words. She stood and looked till a strange terror came over her--a terror too mysterious to be borne.

  ‘Mistress, wake! Mistress, wake!’ she said, wildly, shaking the form.

  But Nest did not awake. And the first person who came to the well that morning found crazy Mary sitting, awestruck, by the poor dead Nest. They had to get the poor creature away by force, before they could remove the body.

  Mary is in Tre-Madoc workhouse. They treat her pretty kindly, and, in general, she is good and tractable. Occasionally, the old paroxysms come on; and, for a time, she is unmanageable. But some one thought of speaking to her about Nest. She stood arrested at the name; and, since then, it is astonishing to see what efforts she makes to curb her insanity; and when the dread time is past, she creeps up to the matron, and says, ‘Mary has tried to be good. Will God let her go to Nest now?’

  The Poetry

  BRAN

  A poem in octosyllabic couplets, ‘Bran’ appeared in Household Words on 22 October 1853. Possibly, like ‘Sketches among the Poor, No. 1’, this was jointly produced by husband and wife. The ballad related how the hero’s mother crossed the sea to ransom her son, only to discover a lifeless Bran. Misled by a deceitful jailor, he had died in despair of her ever arriving. The conclusion illustrates those traditional beliefs of Brittany which represent the dead as re-appearing in the guise of birds. Doubtless Mrs. Gaskell was drawn to the tale by its inherent poetry and pathos, by the devotion of Bran’s mother, and by the legendary returning of the dead. The versification is competent, and the narrative easy-flowing.

  This ballad commemorates the great Battle of Kerloan fought in the tenth century. Kerloan is a small village on the coast of the country of Leon, one of the ancient divisions of Brittany. Evan the Great challenged the men of the North (Normans). The illustrious Breton chief compelled them to retreat; but they carried away many prisoners when they embarked; and among them, was a warrior named Bran, grandson of an earl of the same name, who is often mentioned in the Acts of Brittany. Near Kerloan, on the sea-coast, there still exists a small village, where most probably Bran was made prisoner. It may be necessary to add that Breton traditions frequently represent the dead appearing in the form of birds, and
that the love of country and of home, is to this day a passionate feeling among the Bretons. Bran, besides being a man’s name, signifies also a crow in the Breton language.

  BRAN

  I.

  WOUNDED sore was the youthful knight,

  Grandson of Bran, at Kerloan fight.

  In that bloody field by the wild sea-shore,

  Last of his race, was he wounded sore.

  Dear did we pay, though we won that day;

  Lost was our darling - borne far, far away.

  Borne o’er the sea to a dungeon tower,

  Helpless he wept in the foeman’s power.

  “Comrades, ye triumph with mirth and cheer,

  While I lie wounded and heart-sick here!

  “O find a messenger true for me,

  To bear me a letter across the sea.”

  A messenger true they brought him there,

  And the young knight warned him thus with care:

  “Lay now that dress of thine aside,

  And in beggar’s weeds thy service hide.

  “And take my ring, my ring of gold,

  And wrap it safe in some secret fold.”

  “But, once at my mother’s castle gate,

  That ring will gain admittance straight;

  “And O, if she comes to ransom me,

  Then high let the white flag hoisted be;

  “But if she comes not - ah! well-a-day!