This cottage always struck me as being in a beautiful situation, sheltered, but not too much shut in for health; with a bright look out into a distant scene of much variety. But a few years ago, it gave me more a feeling of desolation and hermit-like isolation from the world than it does now. Now there are signs of childhood about, and children’s voices blend with the song of the wood-birds, - a child’s garden may be detected in this strange little mixture of white pebbles, and fading dandelions and daisies; and while quite enough of house-leek, and stone-crop, and moss, and travellers’ joy, are retained about the roof and walls to give it that rich variety of colour you see, yet much has been cleared away that formerly gave it the appearance of a dwelling, which was shrinking back into the green bosom of mother earth. The currant bushes are pruned down into fruitfulness; and the long rose-branches do not trail on the ground any more.
Now listen to me while I tell you what I heard of the inhabitants of that cottage during the last thirty years. Sit down on this felled tree, and while the noonday hum of busy insects in the wood mingles with the hum of the bees in yonder hives, I will weave together what I have learnt of “Martha Preston.”
This house, and perhaps forty acres of land, some rocky and sterile, hardly fit even for feeding sheep, some mere bog, and as such, only good to furnish peat for fuel, and some rich meadow-land, formed the hereditary possessions of the Prestons, Westmoreland “statesmen.” For two hundred years, certainly, this nook of land had been theirs; and for nearly as long a time had that house been their habitation, to judge from the initials and date carved up and down on the old oaken screen, the meal and clap-bread chest, the dresser and settle. They were probably made on the spot, out of the remains of some of the old forest-trees; and had been polished by many a housewife, before Jane Preston set her daughter Martha to rub them as her morning’s task. Thomas and Jane Preston had two children, Martha and John. The sister was the elder by eight years, and felt like a mother to the little boy, whom she had nursed almost more than his real mother. For Jane had to go to market, to see after the cows and the dairy, to look after the sheep on the fell, and was a busy, bustling, managing woman; the “gray mare” some people said. If she had had time, she would have been fond of her children, but as it was, on week days they were rather in her way. John Preston was reserved and quiet; a man of few words, but sensible, conscientious, and thoroughly upright. He never talked about his duty; people did not in those days; but it might be seen that it was the rule of his life; and as such, it impressed itself upon his daughter’s heart.
I do not know if you have ever noticed it, but it strikes me that a very active mother does not always make a very active daughter. She does things too cleverly and eagerly herself, to have patience with the awkward and slow efforts of a learner. At least, such was the case with Jane Preston. Martha was too long in going to market with the butter; she would rather go herself. Martha did not know how to get the “afterings” from the cow, and the best milk was lost; so instead of showing her how to do it, she did it herself. Martha made the clap-bread too thick, - the butter with the water not pressed out, - she folded up the fleeces in the wrong way, so that they had to be done over again; - the end of it was, that Jane Preston did all the work in her own quick, sharp, clever manner, and Martha was left to nurse her little heart’s darling, and roam about the wood, and dream and think. When she was about fifteen, her mother died, - quickly, sharply as she had lived. It was strange to know her dead, when to the last she had seemed so full of active, bustling life; but when she was gone, the husband and daughter she had often worried and annoyed, missed sorely the head and heart which were always full of thought for others, never for herself. Johnnie missed her the least of the three, Martha was his all-in-all. But Martha had now to try and take her mother’s place in the farm; and had to see after sheep and cows, and go to market as well as she could. Johnnie was sent to Grasmere school.
So they went on for several years, till Martha grew up to be a fine young woman, quiet, steady, and calm in her manners, but with a warm, sensitive heart, and a character full of imagination. Heart and character were attracted, (as hearts and characters sometimes are,) by her very opposite; a certain William Hawkshaw, who was engaged as “month’s man,” (helper for a month in the busy sheep- shearing and hay-time,) by her father. He was one of the many sons of a statesman on the other side of Ambleside; his father possessed more land than John Preston, but then his large family made his means more limited, and several of his sons went out as farm-servants. Old Hawkshaw tried to impress upon his sons the most prudent and careful habits; but for a time his precepts lay dormant and unproductive. Will Hawkshaw was a fine, handsome young fellow, light-hearted and gay in appearance; full of spirit and life, and bringing a sort of sunshine with him wherever he went, “at church or at market.” It was the most natural thing in the world, that Martha, living in a green solitude with her father and brother, (of like retired, unsocial habits,) should be powerfully attracted by the young man, who (as the custom is) came to lodge and board with them for the month; and thus was thrown into intimate domestic communion with him. They worked together in the hay; they ran after the truant sheep; and as Johnnie once innocently observed, “Martha had quite learnt to laugh out loud since Will Hawkshaw had come;” for before that, her smile had been as noiseless as a sunbeam; but now her laugh gushed into music. The father saw all with calm approval. It was natural young men and young women should take to each other. Will came of a respectable stock; and if he had not much, why Martha would have a good piece of the money in Kendal Bank (the land went to Johnnie of course); so there was no let or hindrance to the growing attachment. Will was, in his way, attracted by Martha; he was, pleased to see his influence over her, and to perceive that he could stir the depths of that soul, so still and calm in appearance. It must have been soon after that summer month, in 1818, that they were engaged, and Martha’s heart was full to the brim of happiness. There was no definite plan for the future. Will was to labour as farm-servant for a few years; to save; and by-and-by, perhaps, some farm might be to let, within their means. Such was the most they looked forward to; Martha shrunk from too much looking into the future, for now she was secure of Will’s affection, she began to reproach herself for wishing to leave her father and Johnnie; and the natural desire for a home and a husband began to be considered as a crime by her tender conscience, as she felt how necessary she was to their happiness. In this way two or three years passed by; Martha cherishing the idea of Will with the most faithful constancy, and hardly daring to show him the exceeding joy there was in her heart when he came on his occasional visits; he, going from farm-service to farm-service, a favourite everywhere for his manly capabilities and cheerful social temper; and what faults and temptations he had, known principally to himself alone, as hitherto they had borne no fruit whereby men should recognise them.
The next event was the calm sinking into death of John Preston, the elder. He told Martha, a few minutes before his death, what a comfort her engagement was to him in his dying hour; and above all things, charged her to be father and mother to Johnnie, now just sixteen; to see after his worldly affairs, but above all, to bear his soul up with hers to that heaven where the household should meet once more. So for Johnnie’s sake she calmed herself in her orphanhood; and for his sake she ruled her daily life, until such time as she should leave him for a home of her own.
Her share of her father’s property was about £80; a bad year or two for stock had made it less than was one time expected. Will seemed a little surprised at this diminution, and for his sake she wished it had been more. The murrain among the cattle must have sprung from some diseased state of the air, for human beings began to be affected. A low kind of fever, (from the account I heard, a sort of typhoid fever, I imagine,) became prevalent; and to Martha’s sickening terror, Johnnie caught it. When that danger came, it seemed as if her sisterly love swallowed up all other loves; in his helplessness, and rambling unconsciousness,
he was once more the little baby she had carried about with the yearning love of a young mother. Kind neighbours, (neighbours in the Samaritan sense,) came from Easedale and Skelwith, to help her to nurse him for the twenty days of raging illness; the doctor from Ambleside was sent for in distrust of the nearer Grasmere apothecary. And he recovered! But oh, wo! as he recovered, his wandering lost senses were not restored. The neighbours sighed and shook their heads, and looked mysteriously, long before the idea of this sorrow darkened life to Martha. But when he was strong enough to walk out, and when the stupor remained still upon his poor brain, - when the bright blaze of the wood-fire called out a wild laugh of delight, at which he looked round affrighted at the noise himself had made, - when he came cowering up to his sister for protection against the phantoms of his own conjuring up, then Martha knew the truth in her heart, that her brother was an idiot.
The doctor confirmed this with sad gravity. That night Martha never went to bed, but sat alone mutely gazing at the gray embers among which the sparks ran to and fro. There was no doubt in her mind as to her duty, no perplexed struggling of that kind; but before her eyes his life, from his babyhood upwards, was displayed as in a panorama; and that memory of the past and thought of the present, made the tears roll unheeded down her cheeks, and drop unwiped upon her lap. The very mice ran about, after awhile, as if she had not been there, so still and motionless was she through the night of inward agony. When it was light enough to write, she took pen and paper and desired Will Hawkshaw to come to her. She could not express thoughts easily in this unwonted manner, so confined herself to this one request, reserving the reason till he should come.
The next Sunday brought him as she had expected, and his quick eye understood the trouble, before she, with her sobbing voice, could put it into words. Then the tares sprang up. The old worldly maxims sown by his father covered and strangled the life out of the wheat. If Johnnie were shut up in an asylum, he and Martha might have the land, and marry at once. Thought of their marriage had been in Martha’s mind too, and all bashfulness forgotten in the sense of her exceeding sorrow, she proposed it to him with a calm manner, only as her words struck upon her own ear a maidenly blush covered her face.
“If you come here I can do all I need to do, and tend the poor lad too. The doctor gave but little hope; but God is powerful for many things, and I will never cease praying.” But Will had other thoughts, the covetousness of his heart was as a mail-clad man, and he believed his power over Martha was enough to persuade her to his views; but he was mistaken. She saw a great gulf between their souls that day - a greater, deeper gulf than that between her and the poor innocent who causelessly went in and out with mutterings and laughter, witless of the misery of which he was even then the occasion. Though Martha shrank and shuddered as she first began to understand Will, she hoped for many hours that it might be a mistake - a dream; that he was only joking (at a strange, sad, inappropriate time, to be sure); and the sun set that October day while they were still discussing the matter. I believe Will had no idea but that she would yield if he was relentless and firm enough. He had made many conquests among the farmers’ daughters, and had a great idea of his own power; so when they parted that evening (he had to go to Patterdale to his work the next day,) he thought he was only leaving her for a time to digest his words, and expected to be recalled, even with penitence on her part, before the next Sunday. He went so far as to talk of his prospects to one or two companions; but the letter from Martha never came. He had boasted of his power - and his power was defied. Then anger took the place of the love he had had; and at the best of times his way of loving had been very different from Martha’s.
And Martha lived alone with her idiot brother. She braced herself up to her life, and said that with God’s help she would go through it. So she did. Something of her mother’s character came out in the energy with which she devoted herself to the management of the farm. She got help at busy times, and always the advice of her neighbours was at her service; for though they said little, they felt deep respect for her. Johnnie, too, could help a little, and liked to be employed by her. He was as docile as a child in general, but sometimes (old people have told me), he was restless, and wild, and irritable, and passers through the wood in dead of night heard his cries, and Martha’s voice soothing him with singing hymns, - her voice that never stayed for all her anguish and anxiety, but went clear and bell-like up to God. That singing of hers - that homely loving music, used to quiet him; but for all that she might have been doing and bearing through the night, she was abroad as early as ever in the mornings, and used to say to sympathizing inquirers that Johnnie was much the same. They respected her uncomplaining reserve too much to tell what they had heard; and the poor creature had received such a terrible fright from the proposal made by Will, of sending her brother to an asylum, (or as she phrased it, a “mad-house,”) that I believe she would have born anything rather than have made revelations which should give any ground for such a proceeding. What she endured exactly can therefore never be known on earth. Once, I was told, a farmer, rising more than usually betimes to look after a horse that was ill, saw in the summer’s dawn Martha walking to and fro in a little paddock, with hasty, agitated steps, wringing her hands; and then he thought he caught words of passionate prayer. But he did not go up to her, and passed on unobserved by the wood-road near the cottage; as he saw the open door, his mind suggested that perhaps there might be some reason for her violent emotion, in some sudden illness of the poor idiot, so he went in softly, and saw Johnnie lying asleep on the settle, with flushed face and disordered hair, as if he had been in great irritation; but he breathed as if in deep sleep (probably from exhaustion), and was tenderly covered up with Martha’s Sunday cloak; so the man went on his way, and contented himself with sending his wife in the course of the day, ostensibly on some unimportant errand, but in reality to see how the sister and brother were going on. Johnnie then seemed pretty well, but Martha looked haggard and worn. But to all inquiries respecting her brother she answered so curtly, and unwillingly, that no real information was to be gained.
All this time Will Hawkshaw had not been idle in his way of getting through the world. The boasts he had uttered in the early days of his estrangement of his unlimited power over Martha, cut off the vain man from any chance of a retreat from his first avowed determination; if, indeed, he ever wished to change his mind. But independently of the difference of love, arising from the difference of character, he was a man thrown abroad in the shifting, vivid scenes of life; she was a woman dwelling alone, with ample leisure during the long, long nights and solitary days, to nurse up his remembrance, or rather the remembrance of what she had fancied him to be. So it was not without a shock, the depth of which was, I suppose, known only to God, who searcheth all hearts, that, about three years after their last interview, she heard of his intended marriage to the only daughter of a wealthy statesman in Troutbeck. As far as I could make out from the account, vague as to time, yet graphic as to particulars, given me, it must have been close upon this period that the farmer saw her abroad in the fields in such deep distress, after one of Johnnie’s restless nights.
Of course the marriage soon followed the public announcement of such intention; and henceforward Martha’s life presented no outward variety for many years. Young children grew up to man’s estate, - all was unchanged to her. Girls and boys became old married people; her days and nights had the only variety of Johnnie’s being well or ill. At last a change came; the solemn change of life into death. After a day or two of violent illness, Johnnie went to his long rest. Martha thought that in the speechless exhaustion which immediately preceded death she saw sense in his eyes, and a composed intelligence in his face; and certain it is, those poor eyes followed her moving form, as long as life gave them power to recognise her.
After the funeral was over, the friendly neighbours came in more frequently than before, when their visits had been so unacceptable. Still the nearest were far away; and t
heir lives were busy: and many and many a day, and many a week must have passed to Martha in solitude. She was asked again and again to the “gaieties” of the neighbourhood;. to the christenings at Christmas, the favourite time in that country - the mountain sheep-shearings. She was urged to accompany neighbours to the grand dissipation of sales by auction, but all this she steadily refused. Though she was more than a middle-aged woman now, her heart still beat, her face still flushed at the thought that at some of these gatherings she might meet the lover of her youth. She had never been able to displace her ideal by the thought of the man he really was, and as she acknowledged him to herself to be. A neighbour took her produce to market, and made what little purchases she required; two or three kindly friends helped her at busy times; and were consulted as to the disposal of her accumulating money, for Martha was growing very rich in the simple estimation of the dalesmen; a circumstance about which she scarcely thought herself; money had but little power to heal the deep, sharp sorrows of her heart. She was growing old alone; with a most loving nature, she had none to love as she could have done, had God permitted her to have husband and children; and sometimes in the deep midnight she cried aloud to heaven in her exceeding grief that she had never heard a child’s murmuring voice call her “Mother.” The late autumn, with falling leaves, and piping winds, and long rainy nights harmonized with her life, which like the year had had a bright calm spring, in the days now long past, when she strayed about the woods with little Johnnie. She saw herself and him, happy wanderers; she watched the two pictures in her mind’s eye as if they were separate from herself, and so they were, by long years of sorrow and disappointment.
Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell Page 481
