Lois the Witch

by Elizabeth Gaskell

  And so the good Nathan, his own heart heavy enough, tried to soothe his womenkind. But of the three, his eyes were longest in closing; his apprehensions the deepest founded.

  ‘I misdoubt me I hanna done well by th’ lad. I misdoubt me sore,’ was the thought that kept him awake till day began to dawn. ‘Summat’s wrong about him, or folk would na look at me wi’ such piteous-like een when they speak on him. I can see th’ meaning of it, thof I’m too proud to let on. And Lawson, too, he holds his tongue more nor he should do, when I ax him how my lad’s getting on, and whatten sort of a lawyer he’ll mak. God be marciful to Hester an’ me, if th’ lad’s gone away! God be marciful! But maybe it’s this lying waking a’ the night through, that maks me so fearfu’. Why, when I were his age, I daur be bound I should ha’ spent money fast enoof, i’ I could ha’ come by it. But I had to arn it; that maks a great differ’. Well! It were hard to thwart th’ child of our old age, and we waitin’ so long for to have ’un!’

  Next morning, Nathan rode Moggy, the cart horse, into Highminster to see Mr Lawson. Anybody who saw him ride out of his own yard, would have been struck with the change in him which was visible, when he returned; a change, more than a day’s unusual exercise should have made in a man of his years. He scarcely held the reins at all. One jerk of Moggy’s head would have plucked them out of his hands. His head was bent forward, his eyes looking on some unseen thing, with long unwinking gaze. But as he drew near home on his return, he made an effort to recover himself.

  ‘No need fretting them,’ he said; ‘lads will be lads. But I didna think he had it in him to be so thowtless, young as he is. Well, well! he’ll maybe get more wisdom i’ Lunnon. Anyways it’s best to cut him off fra such evil lads as Will Hawker, and such-like. It’s they as have led my boy astray. He were a good chap till he knowed them – a good chap till he knowed them.’

  But he put all his cares in the background when he came into the house-place, where both Bessy and his wife met him at the door, and both would fain lend a hand to take off his greatcoat.

  ‘Theer, wenches, theer! ye might let a man alone for to get out on’s clothes! Why, I might ha’ struck thee, lass.’ And he went on talking, trying to keep them off for a time from the subject that all had at heart. But there was no putting them off for ever; and, by dint of repeated questioning on his wife’s part, more was got out than he had ever meant to tell – enough to grieve both his hearers sorely: and yet the brave old man still kept the worst in his own breast.

  The next day Benjamin came home for a week or two, before making his great start to London. His father kept him at a distance, and was solemn and quiet in his manner to the young man. Bessy, who had shown anger enough at first, and had uttered many a sharp speech, began to relent, and then to feel hurt and displeased that her uncle should persevere so long in his cold, reserved manner, and Benjamin just going to leave them. Her aunt went, tremblingly busy, about the clothes-presses and drawers, as if afraid of letting herself think either of the past or the future; only once or twice, coming behind her son, she suddenly stooped over his sitting figure, and kissed his cheek, and stroked his hair. Bessy remembered afterwards – long years afterwards – how he had tossed his head away with nervous irritability on one of these occasions, and had muttered – her aunt did not hear it, but Bessy did —

  ‘Can’t you leave a man alone?’

  Towards Bessy herself he was pretty gracious. No other words express his manner: it was not warm, nor tender, nor cousinly, but there was an assumption of underbred politeness towards her as a young, pretty woman; which politeness was neglected in his authoritative or grumbling manner towards his mother, or his sullen silence before his father. He once or twice ventured on a compliment to Bessy on her personal appearance. She stood still, and looked at him with astonishment.

  ‘How’s my eyes changed sin last thou sawst them,’ she asked, ‘that thou must be telling me about ’em i’ that fashion? I’d rayther by a deal see thee helping thy mother when she’s dropped her knitting-needle and canna see i’ th’ dusk for to pick it up.’

  But Bessy thought of his pretty speech about her eyes long after he had forgotten making it, and would have been puzzled to tell the colour of them. Many a day, after he was gone, did she look earnestly in the little oblong looking-glass, which hung up against the wall of her little sleeping-chamber, but which she used to take down in order to examine the eyes he had praised, murmuring to herself, ‘Pretty soft grey eyes! Pretty soft grey eyes!’ until she would hang up the glass again with a sudden laugh and a rosy blush.

  In the days, when he had gone away to the vague distance and vaguer place – the city called London – Bessy tried to forget all that had gone against her feeling of the affection and duty that a son owed to his parents; and she had many things to forget of this kind that would keep surging up into her mind. For instance, she wished that he had not objected to the home-spun, home-made shirts which his mother and she had had such pleasure in getting ready for him. He might not know, it was true – and so her love urged – how carefully and evenly the thread had been spun: how, not content with bleaching the yarn in the sunniest meadow, the linen, on its return from the weaver’s, had been spread out afresh on the sweet summer grass, and watered carefully night after night when there was no dew to perform the kindly office. He did not know – for no one but Bessy herself did – how many false or large stitches, made large and false by her aunt’s failing eyes (who yet liked to do the choicest part of the stitching all by herself), Bessy had unpicked at night in her own room, and with dainty fingers had restitched; sewing eagerly in the dead of night. All this he did not know; or he could never have complained of the coarse texture; the old-fashioned make of these shirts; and urged on his mother to give him part of her little store of egg and butter money in order to buy newer-fashioned linen in Highminster.

  When once that little precious store of his mother’s was discovered, it was well for Bessy’s peace of mind that she did not know how loosely her aunt counted up the coins, mistaking guineas for shillings, or just the other way, so that the amount was seldom the same in the old black spoutless teapot. Yet this son, this hope, this love, had still a strange power of fascination over the household. The evening before he left, he sat between his parents, a hand in theirs on either side, and Bessy on the old creepie-stool, her head lying on her aunt’s knee, and looking up at him from time to time, as if to learn his face off by heart; till his glances meeting hers, made her drop her eyes, and only sigh.

  He stopped up late that night with his father, long after the women had gone to bed. But not to sleep; for I will answer for it the grey-haired mother never slept a wink till the late dawn of the autumn day, and Bessy heard her uncle come up stairs with heavy, deliberate footsteps, and go to the old stocking which served him for bank; and count out golden guineas – once he stopped, but again he went on afresh, as if resolved to crown his gift with liberality. Another long pause – in which she could but indistinctly hear continued words, it might have been advice, it might be a prayer, for it was in her uncle’s voice; and then father and son came up to bed. Bessy’s room was but parted from her cousin’s by a thin wooden partition; and the last sound she distinctly heard, before her eyes, tired out with crying, closed themselves in sleep, was the guineas clinking down upon each other at regular intervals, as if Benjamin were playing at pitch and toss with his father’s present.

  After he was gone, Bessy wished he had asked her to walk part of the way with him into Highminster. She was all ready, her things laid out on the bed; but she could not accompany him without invitation.

  The little household tried to close over the gap as best they might. They seemed to set themselves to their daily work with unusual vigour; but somehow when evening came there had been little done. Heavy hearts never make light work, and there was no telling how much care and anxiety each had had to bear in secret in the field, at the wheel or in the dairy. Formerly he was looked for every Saturday; looked f
or, though he might not come, or if he came, there were things to be spoken about, that made his visit anything but a pleasure: still he might come, and all things might go right, and then what sunshine, what gladness to those humble people! But now he was away, and dreary winter was come on; old folks’ sight fails, and the evenings were long, and sad, in spite of all Bessy could do or say. And he did not write so often as he might – so every one thought; though every one would have been ready to defend him from either of the others who had expressed such a thought aloud. ‘Surely!’ said Bessy to herself, when the first primroses peeped out in a sheltered and sunny hedge-bank, and she gathered them as she passed home from afternoon church – ‘surely, there never will be such a dreary, miserable winter again as this has been.’ There had been a great change in Nathan and Bessy Huntroyd during this last year. The spring before, when Benjamin was yet the subject of more hopes than fears, his father and mother looked what I may call an elderly middle-aged couple: people who had a good deal of hearty work in them yet. Now – it was not his absence alone that caused the change – they looked frail and old, as if each day’s natural trouble was a burden more than they could bear. For Nathan had heard sad reports about his only child, and had told them solemnly to his wife, as things too bad to be believed, and yet, ‘God help us, if indeed he is such a lad as this!’ Their eyes were become too dry and hollow for many tears; they sat together, hand in hand; and shivered, and sighed, and did not speak many words, or dare to look at each other: and then Hester had said:

  ‘We mauna tell th’ lass. Young folks’ hearts break wi’ a little, and she’d be apt to fancy it were true.’ Here the old woman’s voice broke into a kind of piping cry, but she struggled, and her next words were all right. ‘We mauna tell her; he’s bound to be fond on her, and may-be, if she thinks well on him, and loves him, it will bring him straight!’

  ‘God grant it!’ said Nathan.

  ‘God shall grant it!’ said Hester, passionately moaning out her words; and then repeating them, alas! with a vain repetition.

  ‘It’s a bad place for lying, is Highminster,’ said she at length, as if impatient of the silence. ‘I never knowed such a place for getting up stories. But Bessy knows nought on, and nother you nor me belie’es ’em; that’s one blessing.’

  But if they did not in their hearts believe them, how came they to look so sad, and worn, beyond what mere age could make them?

  Then came round another year, another winter, yet more miserable than the last. This year, with the primroses, came Benjamin; a bad, hard, flippant young man, with yet enough of specious manners and handsome countenance to make his appearance striking at first to those to whom the aspect of a London fast young man of the lowest order is strange and new. Just at first, as he sauntered in with a swagger and an air of indifference, which was partly assumed, partly real, his old parents felt a simple kind of awe of him, as if he were not their son, but a real gentleman; but they had too much fine instinct in their homely natures not to know, after a very few minutes had passed, that this was not a true prince.

  ‘Whatten ever does he mean,’ said Hester to her niece, as soon as they were alone, ‘by a’ them maks and wearlocks? And he minces his words as if his tongue were clipped short, or split like a magpie’s. Hech! London is as bad as a hot day i’ August for spoiling good flesh; for he were a good-looking lad when he went up; and now, look at him, with his skin gone into lines and flourishes, just like the first page on a copy-book!’

  ‘I think he looks a good deal better, aunt, for them new-fashioned whiskers!’ said Bessy, blushing still at the remembrance of the kiss he had given her on first seeing her – a pledge, she thought, poor girl, that, in spite of his long silence in letter-writing, he still looked upon her as his troth-plight wife. There were things about him which none of them liked, although they never spoke of them, yet there was also something to gratify them in the way in which he remained quiet at Nab-end, instead of seeking variety, as he had formerly done, by constantly stealing off to the neighbouring town. His father had paid all the debts that he knew of, soon after Benjamin had gone up to London; so there were no duns that his parents knew of to alarm him, and keep him at home. And he went out in the morning with the old man, his father, and lounged by his side, as Nathan went round his fields, with busy yet infirm gait, having heart, as he would have expressed it, in all that was going on, because at length his son seemed to take an interest in the farming affairs, and stood patiently by his side, while he compared his own small galloways with the great short-horns looming over his neighbour’s hedge.

  ‘It’s a slovenly way, thou seest, that of selling th’ milk; folk don’t care whether it’s good or not, so that they get their pint-measure full of stuff that’s watered afore it leaves th’ beast, instead o’ honest cheating by the help o’ th’ pump. But look at Bessy’s butter, what skill it shows! part her own manner o’ making, and part good choice o’ cattle. It’s a pleasure to see her basket, a’ packed ready for to go to market; and it’s noan o’ a pleasure for to see the buckets fu’ of their blue starch-water as yon beasts give. I’m thinking they crossed th’ breed wi’ a pump not long sin’. Hech! but our Bessy’s a cleaver canny wench! I sometimes think thou’It be for gie’ing up th’ law, and taking to th’ oud trade, when thou wedst wi’ her!’ This was intended to be a skilful way of ascertaining whether there was any ground for the old farmer’s wish and prayer that Benjamin might give up the law, and return to the primitive occupation of his father. Nathan dared to hope it now, since his son had never made much by his profession, owing, as he had said, to his want of a connexion: and the farm, and the stock, and the clean wife, too, were ready to his hand; and Nathan could safely rely on himself never in his most unguarded moments to reproach his son with the hardlyearned hundreds that had been spent on his education. So the old man listened with painful interest to the answer which his son was evidently struggling to make; coughing a little, and blowing his nose before he spoke.

  ‘Well! you see, father, law is a precarious livelihood; a man, as I may express myself, has no chance in the profession unless he is known – known to the judges, and tiptop barristers, and that sort of thing. Now, you see, my mother and you have no acquaintance that you may call exactly in that line. But luckily I have met with a man, a friend, as I may say, who is really a first-rate fellow, knowing everybody, from the Lord Chancellor downwards; and he has offered me a share in his business – a partnership in short—’ He hesitated a little.

  ‘I’m sure that’s uncommon kind of the gentleman,’ said Nathan. ‘I should like for to thank him mysen; for it’s not many as would pick up a young chap out o’ th’ dirt as it were, and say, “Here’s hauf my good fortune for you, sir, and your very good health.” Most on ’em, when they’re gettin’ a bit o’ luck, run off wi’ it to keep it a’ to themselves, and gobble it down in a corner. What may be his name, for I should like to know it?’

  ‘You don’t quite apprehend me, father. A great deal of what you’ve said is true to the letter. People don’t like to share their good luck, as you say.’

  ‘The more credit to them as does,’ broke in Nathan.

  ‘Ay, but, you see, even such a fine fellow as my friend Cavendish does not like to give away half his good practice for nothing. He expects an equivalent.’

  ‘An equivalent,’ said Nathan: his voice had dropped down an octave. ‘And what may that be? There’s always some meaning in grand words, I take it, though I’m not book-larned enough to find it out.’

  ‘Why, in this case the equivalent he demands for taking me into partnership, and afterwards relinquishing the whole business to me, is three hundred pounds down.’

  Benjamin looked sideways from under his eyes to see how his father took the proposition. His father struck his stick deep down in the ground, and leaning one hand upon it, faced round at him.

  ‘Then thy fine friend may go and be hanged. Three hunder pound! I’ll be darned an’ danged too, if I know where to g
et ’em, if I’d be making a fool o’ thee an’ mysen too.’

  He was out of breath by this time. His son took his father’s first words in dogged silence; it was but the burst of surprise he had led himself to expect, and did not daunt him for long.

  ‘I should think, sir—’

  ‘ “Sir” —whatten for dost thou “sir” me? Is them your manners? I’m plain Nathan Huntroyd, who never took on to be a gentleman; but I have paid my way up to this time, which I shannot do much longer, if I’m to have a son coming an’ asking me for three hunder pound, just meet same as if I were a cow, and had nothing to do but let down my milk to the first person as strokes me.’

  ‘Well, father,’ said Benjamin, with an affectation of frankness, ‘then there’s nothing for me, but to do as I have often planned before; go and emigrate.’

  ‘And what?’ said his father, looking sharply and steadily at him.

  ‘Emigrate. Go to America, or India, or some colony where there would be an opening for a young man of spirit.’

  Benjamin had reserved this proposition for his trump card, expecting by means of it to carry all before him. But, to his surprise, his father plucked his stick out of the hole he had made when he so vehemently thrust it into the ground, and walked on four or five steps in advance; there he stood still again, and there was a dead silence for a few minutes.

  ‘It ’ud, may-be, be th’ best thing thou couldst do,’ the father began. Benjamin set his teeth hard to keep in curses. It was well for poor Nathan he did not look round then, and see the look his son gave him. ‘But it would come hard like upon us, upon Hester and me, for, whether thou’rt a good ’un or not, thou’rt our flesh and blood, our only bairn, and if thou’rt not all as a man could wish, it’s, may-be, been the fault on our pride i’ thee. —It ’ud kill the missus if he went off to Amerikay, and Bess, too, the lass as thinks so much on him!’ The speech, originally addressed to his son, had wandered off into a monologue – as keenly listened to by Benjamin, however, as if it had all been spoken to him. After a pause of consideration, his father turned around: ‘Yon man – I wunnot call him a friend o’ yourn, to think of asking you for such a mint o’ money – is not th’ only one, I’ll be bound, as could give ye a start i’ the law? Other folks ’ud, may-be, do it for less?’