‘What were we talking about?’ said Ralph, at length, with the most natural air in the world, just as if he had really been forgetful of some half-discussed subject of interest.
‘Of what you’d a d--d deal better hold your tongue about,’ growled out Mr Wilkins, in a surly thick voice.
‘Sir!’ said Ralph, starting to his feet with real passion at being so addressed by ‘Wilkins the attorney.’
‘Yes,’ continued the latter, ‘I’ll manage my own affairs, and allow of no meddling and no questioning. I said so once before, and I was not minded, and bad came of it; and now I say it again. And if you’re to come here and put impertinent questions, and stare at me as you’ve been doing this half-hour past, why, the sooner you leave this house the better!’
Ralph half turned to take him at his word, and go at once; but then he ‘gave Ellinor another chance,’ as he worded it in his thoughts; but it was in no spirit of conciliation that he said:
‘You’ve taken too much of that stuff, sir. You don’t know what you’re saying. If you did, I should leave your house at once, never to return.
‘You think so, do you?’ said Mr Wilkins, trying to stand up, and look dignified and sober. ‘I say, sir, that if you ever venture again to talk and look as you have done tonight, why, sir, I will ring the bell and have you shown the door by my servants. So now you’re warned, my fine fellow!’ He sat down, laughing a foolish tipsy laugh of triumph. In another minute his arm was held firmly but gently by Ralph.
‘Listen, Mr Wilkins!’ he said, in a low hoarse voice. ‘You shall never have to say to me twice what you have said tonight. Henceforward we are as strangers to each other. As to Ellinor’ - his tones softened a little, and he sighed in spite of himself - ‘I do not think we should have been happy. I believe our engagement was formed when we were too young to know our own minds, but I would have done my duty and kept to my word; but you, sir, have yourself severed the connection between us by your insolence tonight. I, to be turned out of your house by your servants! - I, a Corbet, of Westley, who would not submit to such threats from a peer of the realm, let him be ever so drunk!’ He was out of the room, almost out of the house, before he had spoken the last words.
Mr Wilkins sat still, first fiercely angry, then astonished, and lastly dismayed into sobriety. ‘Corbet, Corbet! Ralph!’ he called in vain; then he got up and went to the door, opened it, looked into the fully-lighted hall; all was so quiet there that he could hear the quiet voices of the women in the drawing-room talking together. He thought for a moment, went to the hat-stand, and missed Ralph’s low-crowned straw hat.
Then he sat down once more in the dining-room, and endeavoured to make out exactly what had passed; but he could not believe that Mr Corbet had come to any enduring or final resolution to break off his engagement, and he had almost reasoned himself back into his former state of indignation at impertinence and injury, when Ellinor came in, pale, hurried, and anxious.
‘Papa! what does this mean?’ said she, putting an open note into his hand. He took up his glasses, but his hand shook so that he could hardly read. The note was from the parsonage, to Ellinor; only three lines sent by Mr Ness’s servant, who had come to fetch Mr Corbet’s things. He had written three lines with some consideration for Ellinor, even when he was in his first flush of anger against her father, and it must be confessed of relief at his own freedom, thus brought about by the act of another, and not of his own working out, which partly saved his conscience. The note ran thus:
‘DEAR ELLINOR, - Words have passed between your father and
me which have obliged me to leave his house, I fear, never to
return to it. I will write more fully tomorrow. But do not grieve
too much, for I am not, and never have been, good enough for
you. God bless you, my dearest Nelly, though I call you so for
the last time. - R.C.’
‘Papa, what is it?’ Ellinor cried, clasping her hands together, as her father sat silent, vacantly gazing into the fire, after finishing the note.
‘I don’t know!’ said he, looking up at her piteously; ‘it’s the world, I think. Everything goes wrong with me and mine: it went wrong before THAT night - so it can’t be that, can it, Ellinor?’
‘Oh, papa!’ said she, kneeling down by him, her face hidden on his breast.
He put one arm languidly round her. ‘I used to read of Orestes and the Furies at Eton when I was a boy, and I thought it was all a heathen fiction. Poor little motherless girl!’ said he, laying his other hand on her head, with the caressing gesture he had been accustomed to use when she had been a little child. ‘Did you love him so very dearly, Nelly?’ he whispered, his cheek against her; ‘for somehow of late he has not seemed to me good enough for thee. He has got an inkling that something has gone wrong; and he was very inquisitive - I may say, he questioned me in a relentless kind of way.’
‘Oh, papa, it was my doing, I am afraid, I said something long ago about possible disgrace.’
He pushed her away; he stood up, and looked at her with the eyes dilated, half in fear, half in fierceness, of an animal at bay; he did not heed that his abrupt movement had almost thrown her prostrate on the ground.
‘You, Ellinor! You - you --’
‘Oh, darling father, listen!’ said she, creeping to his knees, and clasping them with her hands. ‘I said it, as if it were a possible case, of someone else - last August - but he immediately applied it, and asked me if it was over me the disgrace, or shame - I forget the words we used - hung; and what could I say?’
‘Anything - anything to put him off the scent. God help me, I am a lost man, betrayed by my child!’
Ellinor let go his knees, and covered her face. Everyone stabbed at that poor heart. In a minute or so her father spoke again.
‘I don’t mean what I say. I often don’t mean it now. Ellinor, you must forgive me, my child!’ He stooped, and lifted her up, and sat down, taking her on his knee, and smoothing her hair off her hot forehead. ‘Remember, child, how very miserable I am, and have forgiveness for me. He had none, and yet he must have seen I had been drinking.’
‘Drinking, papa!’ said Ellinor, raising her head, and looking at him with sorrowful surprise.
‘Yes. I drink now to try and forget,’ said he, blushing and confused.
‘Oh, how miserable we are!’ cried Ellinor, bursting into tears - ‘how very miserable! It seems almost as if God had forgotten to comfort us!’
‘Hush! hush!: said he. ‘Your mother said once she did so pray that you might grow tip religious; you must be religious, child, because she prayed for it so often. Poor Lettice, how glad I am that you are dead!’ Here he began to cry like a child. Ellinor comforted him with kisses rather than words. He pushed her away, after a while, and said, sharply: ‘How much does he know? I must make sure of that. How much did you tell him, Ellinor?’
‘Nothing - nothing, indeed, papa, but what I told you just now!’
‘Tell it me again - the exact words!’
‘I will, as well as I can; but it was last August. I only said, “Was it right for a woman to marry, knowing that disgrace hung over her, and keeping her lover in ignorance of it?”‘
‘That was all, you are sure?’
‘Yes. He immediately applied the case to me - to ourselves.’
‘And he never wanted to know what was the nature of the threatened disgrace?’
‘Yes, he did.’
‘And you told him?’
‘No, not a word more. He referred to the subject again today, in the shrubbery; but I told him nothing more. You quite believe me, don’t you, papa?’
He pressed her to him, but did not speak. Then he took the note up again, and read it with as much care and attention as he could collect in his agitated state of mind.
‘Nelly,’ said he, at length, ‘be says true; he is not good enough for thee. He shrinks from the thought of the disgrace. Thou must stand alone, and bear the sins of thy father.’
He shook so much as he said this, that Ellinor had to put any suffering of her own on one side, and try to confine her thoughts to the necessity of getting her father immediately up to bed. She sat by him till he went to sleep and she could leave him, and go to her own room, to forgetfulness and rest, if she could find those priceless blessings.
CHAPTER X
Mr Corbet was so well known at the parsonage by the two old servants, that he had no difficulty, on reaching it, after his departure from Ford Bank, in having the spare bed-chamber made ready for him, late as it was, and in the absence of the master, who had taken a little holiday, now that Lent and Easter were over, for the purpose of fishing. While his room was getting ready, Ralph sent for his clothes, and by the same messenger he despatched the little note to Ellinor. But there was the letter he had promised her in it still to be written; and it was almost his night’s employment to say enough, yet not too much; for, as he expressed it to himself, he was half way over the stream, and it would be folly to turn back, for he had given nearly as much pain both to himself and Ellinor by this time as he should do by making the separation final. Besides, after Mr Wilkins’s speeches that evening - but he was candid enough to acknowledge that, bad and offensive as they had been, if they had stood alone they might have been condoned.
His letter ran as follows:
‘DEAREST ELLINOR, for dearest you are, and I think will ever
be, my judgment has consented to a step which is giving me
great pain, greater than you wit I readily believe. I am convinced
that it is better that we should part; for circumstances have
occurred since we formed our engagement which, although I
am unaware of their exact nature, I can see weigh heavily upon
you, and have materially affected your father’s behaviour. Nay,
I think, after tonight, I may almost say have entirely altered his
feelings towards me. What these circumstances are I am
ignorant, any further than that I know from your own admission,
that they may lead to some future disgrace. Now, it may be my
fault, it may be in my temperament, to be anxious, above all
things earthly, to obtain and possess a high reputation. I can
only say that it is so, and leave you to blame me for my weakness
as much as you like. But anything that might come in between
me and this object would, I own, be ill tolerated by me; the
very dread of such an obstacle intervening would paralyse me.
I should become irritable, and, deep as my affection is, and
always must be, towards you, I could not promise you a happy,
peaceful life. I should be perpetually haunted by the idea of
what might happen in the way of discovery and shame. I am
the more convinced of this from my observation of your father’s
altered character - an alteration which I trace back to the time
when I conjecture that the secret affairs took place to which you
have alluded. In short, it is for your sake, my dear Ellinor, even
more than for my own, that I feel compelled to affix a final
meaning to the words which your father addressed to me last
night, when he desired me to leave his house for ever. God bless
you, my Ellinor, for the last time my Ellinor. Try to forget as
soon as you can the unfortunate tie which has bound you for a
time to one so unsuitable - I believe I ought to say so unworthy
of you - as - RALPH CORBET.’
Ellinor was making breakfast when this letter was given her. According to the wont of the servants of the respective households of the parsonage and Ford Bank, the man asked if there was any answer. It was only custom; for he had not been desired to do so. Ellinor went to the window to read her letter; the man waiting all the time respectfully for her reply. She went to the writing-table, and wrote:
‘It is all right - quite right. I ought to have thought of it all
last August. I do not think you will forget me easily, but I
entreat you never at any future time to blame yourself. I hope
you will be happy and successful. I suppose I must never write
to you again: but I shall always pray for you. Papa was very
sorry last night for having spoken angrily to you. You must
forgive him - there is great need for forgiveness in this
world. - ELLINOR.’
She kept putting down thought after thought, just to prolong the last pleasure of writing to him. She sealed the note and gave it to the man. Then she sat down and waited for Miss Monro, who had gone to bed on the previous night without awaiting Ellinor’s return from the dining-room.
‘I am late, my dear,’ said Miss Monro, on coming down, ‘but I have a bad headache, and I knew you had a pleasant companion.’ Then, looking round, she perceived Ralph’s absence.
‘Mr Corbet not down yet!’ she exclaimed. And then Ellinor had to tell her the outline of the facts so soon likely to be made public; that Mr Corbet and she had determined to break off their engagement; and that Mr Corbet had accordingly betaken himself to the parsonage; and that she did not expect him to return to Ford Bank. Miss Monro’s astonishment was unbounded. She kept going over and over all the little circumstances she had noticed during the last visit, only on yesterday, in fact, which she could not reconcile with the notion that the two, apparently so much attached to each other but a few hours before, were now to be for ever separated and estranged. Ellinor sickened under the torture; which yet seemed like torture in a dream, from which there must come an awakening and a relief. She felt as if she could not bear any more; yet there was more to bear. Her father, as it turned out, was very ill, and had been so all night long; he had evidently had some kind of attack on the brain, whether apoplectic or paralytic it was for the doctors to decide. In the hurry and anxiety of this day of misery succeeding to misery, she almost forgot to wonder whether Ralph were still at the parsonage - still in Hamley; it was not till the evening visit of the physician that she learnt that he had been seen by Dr Moore as he was taking his place in the morning mail to London. Dr Moore alluded to his name as to a thought that would cheer and comfort the fragile girl during her night-watch by her father’s bedside. But Miss Monro stole out after the doctor to warn him off the subject for the future, crying bitterly over the forlorn position of her darling as she spoke - crying as Ellinor had never yet been able to cry: though all the time, in the pride of her sex, she was endeavouring to persuade the doctor it was entirely Ellinor’s doing, and the wisest and best thing she could have done, as he was not good enough for her, only a poor barrister struggling for a livelihood. Like many other kindhearted people, she fell into the blunder of lowering the moral character of those whom it is their greatest wish to exalt. But Dr Moore knew Ellinor too well to believe the whole of what Miss Monro said; she would never act from interested motives, and was all the more likely to cling to a man because he was down, and unsuccessful. No! there had been a lovers’ quarrel; and it could not have happened at a sadder time.
Before the June roses were in full bloom, Mr Wilkins was dead. He had left his daughter to the guardianship of Mr Ness by some will made years ago; but Mr Ness had caught a rheumatic fever with his Easter fishings, and been unable to be moved home from the little Welsh inn where he had been staying when he was taken ill. Since his last attack, Mr Wilkins’s mind had been much affected; he often talked strangely and wildly; but he had rare intervals of quietness and full possession of his senses. At one of these times he must have written a half-finished pencil note, which his nurse found under his pillow after his death, and brought to Ellinor. Through her tear-blinded eyes she read the weak, faltering words:
‘I am very ill. I sometimes think I shall never get better, so I
wish to ask your pardon for what I said the night before I was<
br />
taken ill. I am afraid my anger made mischief between you and
Ellinor, but I think you will forgive a dying man. If you will
come back and let all be as it used to be, I will make any
apology you may require. If I go, she will be so very friendless;
and I have looked to you to care for her ever since you first --’
Then came some illegible and incoherent writing, ending with,
‘From my death-bed I adjure you to stand her friend.’ I will beg
pardon on my knees for anything --’
And there strength had failed; the paper and pencil had been laid aside to be resumed at some time when the brain was clearer, the hand stronger. Ellinor kissed the letter, reverently folded it up, and laid it among her sacred treasures, by her mother’s half-finished sewing, and a little curl of her baby sister’s golden hair.
Mr Johnson, who had been one of the trustees for Mrs Wilkins’s marriage-settlement, a respectable solicitor in the county town, and Mr Ness, had been appointed executors of his will, and guardians to Ellinor. The will itself had been made several years before, when he imagined himself the possessor of a handsome fortune, the bulk of which he bequeathed to his only child. By her mother’s marriage-settlement, Ford Bank was held in trust for the children of the marriage; the trustees being Sir Frank Holster and Mr Johnson. There were legacies to his executors; a small annuity to Miss Monro, with the expression of a hope that it might be arranged for her to continue living with Ellinor as long as the latter remained unmarried; all his servants were remembered, Dixon especially, and most liberally.
What remained of the handsome fortune once possessed by the testator? The executors asked in vain; there was nothing. They could hardly make out what had become of it, in such utter confusion were all the accounts, both personal and official. Mr Johnson was hardly restrained by his compassion for the orphan from throwing up the executorship in disgust. Mr Ness roused himself from his scholar-like abstraction to labour at the examination of books, parchments, and papers, for Ellinor’s sake. Sir Frank Holster professed himself only a trustee for Ford Bank.
Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell Page 371
