The next day he called on Miss Wilkins herself. She would have been very glad if he had kept on in his ignorance; it was so keenly painful to be in the company of one the sight of whom, even at a distance, had brought her such a keen remembrance of past misery; and when told of his call, as she was sitting at her sewing in the dining-room, she had to nerve herself for the interview before going upstairs into the drawing-room, where he was being entertained by Miss Monro with warm demonstrations of welcome. A little contraction of the brow, a little compression of the lips, an increased pallor on Ellinor’s part, was all that Miss Monro could see in her, though she had put on her glasses with foresight and intention to observe. She turned to the canon; his colour had certainly deepened as he went forwards with outstretched hand to meet Ellinor. That was all that was to be seen; but on the slight foundation of that blush, Miss Monro built many castles; and when they faded away, one after one, she recognized that they were only baseless visions. She used to put the disappointment of her hopes down to Ellinor’s unvaried calmness of demeanour, which might be taken for coldness of disposition; and to her steady refusal to allow Miss Monro to invite Canon Livingstone to the small teas they were in the habit of occasionally giving. Yet he persevered in his calls; about once every fortnight he came, and would sit an hour or more, looking covertly at his watch, as if, as Miss Monro shrewdly observed to herself, he did not go away at last because he wished to do so, but because he ought. Sometimes Ellinor was present, sometimes she was away; in this latter case Miss Monro thought she could detect a certain wistful watching of the door every time a noise was heard outside the room. He always avoided any reference to former days at Hamley, and that, Miss Monro feared, was a bad sign.
After this long uniformity of years without any event closely touching on Ellinor’s own individual life, with the one great exception of Mr Corbet’s marriage, something happened which much affected her. Mr Ness died suddenly at his parsonage, and Ellinor learnt it first from Mr Brown, a clergyman, whose living was near Hamley, and who had been sent for by the parsonage servants as soon as they discovered that it was not sleep, but death, that made their master so late in rising.
Mr Brown had been appointed executor by his late friend, and wrote to tell Ellinor that after a few legacies were paid, she was to have a life-interest in the remainder of the small property which Mr Ness had left, and that it would be necessary for her, as the residuary legatee, to come to Hamley Parsonage as soon as convenient, to decide upon certain courses of action with regard to furniture, books, &c.
Ellinor shrank from this journey, which her love and duty towards her dead friend rendered necessary. She had scarcely left East Chester since she first arrived there, sixteen or seventeen years ago, and she was timorous about the very mode of travelling; and then to go back to Hamley, which she thought never to have seen again! She never spoke much about any feelings of her own, but Miss Monro could always read her silence, and interpreted it into pretty just and forcible words that afternoon when Canon Livingstone called. She liked to talk about Ellinor to him, and suspected that he liked to hear. She was almost annoyed this time by the comfort he would keep giving her; there was no greater danger in travelling by railroad than by coach, a little care about certain things was required, that was all, and the average number of deaths by accidents on railroads were not greater than the average number when people travelled by coach, if you took into consideration the far greater number of travellers. Yes! returning to the deserted scenes of one’s youth was very painful. . . . Had Miss Wilkins made any provision for another lady to take her place as visitor at the school? He believed it was her week. Miss Monro was out of all patience at his entire calmness and reasonableness. Later in the day she became more at peace with him, when she received a kind little note from Mrs Forbes, a great friend of hers, and the mother of the family she was now teaching, saying that Canon Livingstone had called and told her that Ellinor had to go on a very painful journey, and that Mrs Forbes was quite sure Miss Monro’s companionship upon it would be a great comfort to both, and that she could perfectly be set at liberty for a fortnight or so, for it would fall in admirably with the fact that ‘Jeanie was growing tall, and the doctor had advised sea air this spring; so a month’s holiday would suit them now even better than later on.’ Was this going straight to Mrs Forbes, to whom she should herself scarcely have liked to name it, the act of a good, thoughtful man, or of a lover? questioned Miss Monro; but she could not answer her own inquiry, and had to be very grateful for the deed, without accounting for the motives.
A coach met the train at a station about ten miles from Hamley, and Dixon was at the inn where the coach stopped, ready to receive them.
The old man was almost in tears at the sight of them again in the familiar place. He had put on his Sunday clothes to do them honour; and to conceal his agitation he kept up a pretended bustle about their luggage. To the indignation of the inn-porters, who were of a later generation, he would wheel it himself to the parsonage, though he broke down from fatigue once or twice on the way, and had to stand and rest, his ladies waiting by his side, and making remarks on the alterations of houses and the places of trees, in order to give him ample time to recruit himself, for there was no one to wait for them and give them a welcome to the parsonage, which was to be their temporary home. The respectful servants, in deep mourning, had all prepared, and gave Ellinor a note from Mr Brown, saying that he purposely refrained from disturbing them that day after their long journey, but would call on the morrow, and tell them of the arrangements he had thought of making, always subject to Miss Wilkins’s approval.
These were simple enough; certain legal forms to be gone through, any selections from books or furniture to be made, and the rest to be sold by auction as speedily as convenient, as the successor to the living might wish to have repairs and alterations effected in the old parsonage. For some days Ellinor employed herself in business in the house, never going out except to church. Miss Monro, on the contrary, strolled about everywhere, noticing all the alterations in place and people, which were never improvements in her opinion. Ellinor had plenty of callers (her tenants, Mr and Mrs Osbaldistone among others), but, excepting in rare cases - most of them belonged to humble life - she declined to see everyone, as she had business enough on her hands: sixteen years makes a great difference in any set of people. The old acquaintances of her father in his better days were almost all dead or removed; there were one or two remaining, and these Ellinor received; one or two more, old and infirm, confined to their houses, she planned to call upon before leaving Hamley. Every evening, when Dixon had done his work at Mr Osbaldistone’s, he came up to the parsonage, ostensibly to help her in moving or packing books, but really because these two clung to each other - were bound to each other by a bond never to be spoken about. It was understood between them that once before Ellinor left she should go and see the old place, Ford Bank. Not to go into the house, though Mr and Mrs Osbaldistone bad begged her to name her own time for revisiting it when they and their family would be absent, but to see all the gardens and grounds once more; a solemn, miserable visit, which, because of the very misery it involved, appeared to Ellinor to be an imperative duty.
Dixon and she talked together as she sat making a catalogue one evening in the old low-browed library; the casement windows were open into the garden, and the May showers had brought out the scents of the new-leaved sweetbrier bush just below. Beyond the garden-hedge the grassy meadows sloped away down to the river; the parsonage was so much raised that sitting in the house you could see over the boundary hedge. Men with instruments were busy in the meadow. Ellinor, pausing in her work, asked Dixon what they were doing.
‘Them’s the people for the new railway,’ said he. ‘Nought would satisfy the Hamley folk but to have a railway all to themselves - coaches isn’t good enough nowadays.’
He spoke with a tone of personal offence natural to a man who had passed all his life among horses, and considered railway-engi
nes as their despicable rivals, conquering only by stratagem.
By-and-by Ellinor passed on to a subject the consideration of which she had repeatedly urged upon Dixon, and entreated him to come and form one of their household at East Chester. He was growing old, she thought, older even in looks and feelings than in years, and she would make him happy and comfortable in his declining years if he would but come and pass them under her care. The addition which Mr Ness’s bequest made to her income would enable her to do not only this, but to relieve Miss Monro of her occupation of teaching; which, at the years she had arrived at, was becoming burdensome. When she proposed the removal to Dixon he shook his head,
‘It’s not that I don’t thank you, and kindly, too; but I’m too old to go chopping and changing.’
‘But it would be no change to come back to me, Dixon,’ said Ellinor.
‘Yes, it would. I were born i’ Hamley, and it’s i’ Hamley I reckon to die.’
On her urging him a little more, it came out that he had a strong feeling that if he did not watch the spot where the dead man lay buried, the whole would be discovered; and that this dread of his had often poisoned the pleasure of his visit to East Chester.
‘I don’t rightly know how it is, for I sometimes think if it wasn’t for you, missy, I should be glad to have made it all clear before I go; and yet at times I dream, or it comes into my head as I lie awake with the rheumatics, that someone is there, digging; or that I hear ‘em cutting down the tree; and then I get up and look out of the loft window - you’ll mind the window over the stables, as looks into the garden, all covered over wi’ the leaves of the jargonelle pear-tree? That were my room when first I come as stable-boy, and tho’ Mr Osbaldistone would fain give me a warmer one, I allays tell him I like th’ old place best. And by times I’ve getten up five or six times a-night to make sure as there was no one at work under the tree.’
Ellinor shivered a little. He saw it, and restrained himself in the relief he was receiving from imparting his superstitious fancies.
‘You see, missy, I could never rest a-nights if I didn’t feel as if I kept the secret in my hand, and held it tight day and night, so as I could open my hand at any minute and see as it was there. No! my own little missy will let me come and see her now and again, and I know as I can allays ask her for what I want: and if it please God to lay me by, I shall tell her so, and she’ll see as I want for nothing. But somehow I could ne’er bear leaving Hamley. You shall come and follow me to my grave when my time comes.’
‘Don’t talk so, please, Dixon,’ said she.
‘Nay, it’ll be a mercy when I can lay me down and sleep in peace: though I sometimes fear as peace will not come to me even there.’ He was going out of the room, and was now more talking to himself than to her. ‘They say blood will out, and if it weren’t for her part in it, I could wish for a clear breast before I die.’
She did not hear the latter part of this mumbled sentence. She was looking at a letter just brought in and requiring an immediate answer. It was from Mr Brown. Notes from him were of daily occurrence, but this contained an open letter the writing of which was strangely familiar to her - it did not need the signature, ‘Ralph Corbet,’ to tell her whom the letter came from. Fog some moments she could not read the words. They expressed a simple enough request, and were addressed to the auctioneer who was to dispose of the rather valuable library of the late Mr Ness, and whose name had been advertised in connection with the sale, in the Athenaeum, and other similar papers. To him Mr Corbet wrote, saying that he should be unable to be present when the books were sold, but that he wished to be allowed to buy in, at any price decided upon, a certain rare folio edition of Virgil, bound in parchment, and with notes in Italian. The book was fully described. Though no Latin scholar, Ellinor knew the book well - remembered its look from old times, and could instantly have laid her hand upon it. The auctioneer had sent the request on to his employer, Mr Brown. That gentleman applied to Ellinor for her consent. She saw that the fact of the intended sale must be all that Mr Corbet was aware of, and that he could not know to whom the books belonged. She chose out the book, and wrapped and tied it up with trembling hands. He might be the person to untie the knot. It was strangely familiar to her love, after so many years, to be brought into thus much contact with him. She wrote a short note to Mr Brown, in which she requested him to say, as though from himself, and without any mention of her name, that he, as executor, requested Mr Corbet’s acceptance of the Virgil, as a remembrance of his former friend and tutor. Then she rang the bell, and gave the letter and parcel to the servant.
Again alone, and Mr Corbet’s open letter on the table. She took it up and looked at it till the letters dazzled crimson on the white paper. Her life rolled backwards, and she was a girl again. At last she roused herself, but instead of destroying the note - it was long years since all her love-letters from him had been returned to the writer - she unlocked her little writing-case again, and placed this letter carefully down at the bottom, among the dead rose-leaves which embalmed the note from her father, found after his death under his pillow, the little golden curl of her sister’s, the half-finished sewing of her mother.
The shabby writing-case itself was given her by her father long ago, and had since been taken with her everywhere. To be sure, her changes of places had been but few; but if she had gone to Nova Zembla, the sight of that little leather box on awaking from her first sleep, would have given her a sense of home. She locked the case up again, and felt all the richer for that morning.
A day or two afterwards she left Hamley. Before she went she compelled herself to go round the gardens and grounds of Ford Bank. She had made Mrs Osbaldistone understand that it would be painful to her to re-enter the house; but Mr Osbaldistone accompanied her in her walk.
‘You see how literally we have obeyed the clause in the lease which ties us out from any alterations,’ said he, smiling. ‘We are living in a tangled thicket of wood. I must confess that I should have liked to cut down a good deal; but we do not do even the requisite thinnings without making the proper application for leave to Mr Johnson. In fact, your old friend Dixon is jealous of every pea-stick the gardener cuts. I never met with so faithful a fellow. A good enough servant, too, in his way; but somewhat too old-fashioned for my wife and daughters, who complain of his being surly now and then.’
‘You are not thinking of parting with him?’ said Ellinor, jealous for Dixon.
‘Oh, no; he and I are capital friends. And I believe Mrs Osbaldistone herself would never consent to his leaving us. But some ladies, you know, like a little more subserviency in manner than our friend Dixon can boast.’
Ellinor made no reply. They were entering the painted flower-garden, hiding the ghastly memory. She could not speak. She felt as if, with all her striving, she could not move - just as one does in a nightmare - but she was past the place even as this terror came to its acme; and when she came to herself, Mr Osbaldistone was still blandly talking, and saying -
‘It is now a reward for our obedience to your wishes, Miss Wilkins, for if the projected railway passes through the ash-field yonder, we should have been perpetually troubled with the sight of the trains.’ indeed, the sound would have been much more distinct than it will be now coming through the interlacing branches. Then you will not go in, Miss Wilkins? Mrs Osbaldistone desired me to say how happy - Ah! I can understand such feelings - Certainly, certainly; it is so much the shortest way to the town, that we elder ones always go through the stable-yard; for young people, it is perhaps not quite so desirable. Ha! Dixon,’ he continued, ‘on the watch for the Miss Ellinor we so often hear of! This old man,’ he continued to Ellinor, ‘is never satisfied with the seat of our young ladies, always comparing their way of riding with that of a certain missy --’
‘I cannot help it, sir; they’ve quite a different style of hand, and sit all lumpish-like. Now, Miss Ellinor, there --’
‘Hush, Dixon,’ she said, suddenly aware of why the old serv
ant was not popular with his mistress. ‘I suppose I may be allowed to ask for Dixon’s company for an hour or so; we have something to do together before we leave.’
The consent given, the two walked away, as by previous appointment, to Hamley churchyard, where he was to point out to her the exact spot where he wished to be buried. Trampling over the long, rank grass, but avoiding passing directly over any of the thickly-strewn graves, he made straight for one spot, - a little space of unoccupied ground close by, where Molly, the pretty scullery-maid, lay:
Sacred to the Memory of
MARY GREAVES.
Born 1797. Died 1818.
‘We part to meet again.’
‘I put this stone up over her with my first savings,’ said he, looking at it; and then pulling out his knife, he began to clean out the letters. I said then as I would lie by her. And it’ll be a comfort to think you’ll see me laid here. I trust no one’ll be so crabbed as to take a fancy to this here spot of ground.’
Ellinor grasped eagerly at the only pleasure which her money enabled her to give to the old man; and promised him that she would take care and buy the right to that particular piece of ground. This was evidently a gratification Dixon had frequently yearned after; he kept saying, ‘I’m greatly obleeged to ye, Miss Ellinor. I may say I’m truly obleeged.’ And when he saw them off by the coach the next day, his last words were, ‘I cannot justly say how greatly I’m obleeged to you for that matter o’ the churchyard.’ It was a much more easy affair to give Miss Monro some additional comforts; she was as cheerful as ever; still working away at her languages in any spare time, but confessing that she was tired of the perpetual teaching in which her life had been spent during the last thirty years. Ellinor was now enabled to set her at liberty from this, and she accepted the kindness from her former pupil with as much simple gratitude as that with which a mother receives a favour from a child. ‘If Ellinor were but married to Canon Livingstone, I should be happier than I have ever been since my father died,’ she used to say to herself in the solitude of her bedchamber, for talking aloud had become her wont in the early years of her isolated life as a governess. ‘And yet,’ she went on, ‘I don’t know what I should do without her; it is lucky for me that things are not in my hands, for a pretty mess I should make of them, one way or another. Dear! how old Mrs Cadogan used to hate that word “mess, and correct her grand-daughters for using it right before my face, when I knew I had said it myself only the moment before! Well! those days are all over now. God be thanked!’
Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell Page 374
