Lois the Witch

by Elizabeth Gaskell

  ‘Not one of ’em; to give me equal advantages,’ said Benjamin, thinking he perceived signs of relenting.

  ‘Well, then, thou mayst tell him, that it’s nother he nor thee as ’ll see th’ sight o’ three hunder pounds o’ my money. I’ll not deny as I’ve a bit laid up again a rainy day; it’s not so much as thatten though, and a part on it is for Bessy, as has been like a daughter to us.’

  ‘But Bessy is to be your real daughter some day, when I’ve a home to take her to,’ said Benjamin; for he played very fast and loose, even in his own mind, with his engagement with Bessy. Present with her, when she was looking her brightest and best, he behaved to her as if they were engaged lovers: absent from her, he looked upon her rather as a good wedge, to be driven into his parents’ favour on his behalf. Now, however, he was not exactly untrue in speaking as if he meant to make her his wife; for the thought was in his mind, though he made use of it to work upon his father.

  ‘It will be a dree day for us, then,’ said the old man. ‘But God ’ll have us in his keeping, and ’ll may-happen be taking more care on us i’ heaven by that time than Bess, good lass as she is, has had on us at Nab-end. Her heart is set on thee, too. But, lad, I hanna gotten the three hunder; I keeps my cash i’ th’ stocking, thou knowst, till it reaches fifty pound, and then I takes it to Ripon Bank. Now the last scratch they’n gi’en me, made it just two hunder, and I hanna but on to fifteen pound yet i’ the stockin’, and I meant one hunder an’ the red cow’s calf to be for Bess, she’s ta’en such pleasure like i’ rearing it.’

  Benjamin gave a sharp glance at his father to see if he was telling the truth; and, that a suspicion of the old man, his father, had entered into the son’s head, tells enough of his own character.

  ‘I canna do it – I canna do it, for sure – although I shall like to think as I had helped on the wedding. There’s the black heifer to be sold yet, and she’ll fetch a matter of ten pound; but a deal on’t will be needed for seed-corn, for the arable did but bad last year, and I thought I would try – I’ll tell thee what, lad! I’ll make it as though Bess lent thee her hunder, only thou must give her a writ of hand for it, and thou shalt have a’ the money i’ Ripon Bank, and see if the lawyer wunnot let thee have a share of what he offered thee at three hunder, for two. I dunnot mean for to wrong him, but thou must get a fair share for the money. At times I think thou’rt done by folk; now, I wadna have you cheat a bairn of a brass farthing; same time I wadna have thee so soft as to be cheated.’

  To explain this, it should be told that some of the bills which Benjamin had received money from his father to pay, had been altered so as to cover other and less creditable expenses which the young man had incurred; and the simple old farmer, who had still much faith left in him for his boy, was acute enough to perceive that he had paid above the usual price for the articles he had purchased.

  After some hesitation, Benjamin agreed to receive this two hundred, and promised to employ it to the best advantage in setting himself up in business. He had, nevertheless, a strange hankering after the additional fifteen pounds that was left to accumulate in the stocking. It was his, he thought, as heir to his father; and he soon lost some of his usual complaisance for Bessy that evening, as he dwelt on the idea that there was money being laid by for her, and grudged it to her even in imagination. He thought more of this fifteen pounds that he was not to have, than of all the hardly earned and humbly saved two hundred that he was to come into possession of. Meanwhile Nathan was in unusual spirits that evening. He was so generous and affectionate at heart, that he had an unconscious satisfaction in having helped two people on the road to happiness by the sacrifice of the greater part of his property. The very fact of having trusted his son so largely, seemed to make Benjamin more worthy of trust in his father’s estimation. The sole idea he tried to banish was, that, if all came to pass as he hoped, both Benjamin and Bessy would be settled far away from Nab-end; but then he had a child-like reliance that ‘God would take care of him and his missus, somehow or anodder. It wur o’ no use looking too far ahead.’

  Bessy had to hear many unintelligible jokes from her uncle that night; for he made no doubt that Benjamin had told her all that had passed, whereas the truth was, his son had said never a word to his cousin on the subject.

  When the old couple were in bed, Nathan told his wife of the promise he had made to his son, and the plan in life which the advance of the two hundred was to promote. Poor Hester was a little startled at the sudden change in the destination of the sum, which she had long thought of with secret pride as ‘money i’ th’ bank’. But she was willing enough to part with it, if necessary, for Benjamin. Only, how such a sum could be necessary, was the puzzle. But even this perplexity was jostled out of her mind by the overwhelming idea, not only of ‘our Ben’ settling in London, but of Bessy going there too as his wife. This great trouble swallowed up all care about money, and Hester shivered and sighed all the night through with distress. In the morning, as Bessy was kneading the bread, her aunt, who had been sitting by the fire in an unusual manner, for one of her active habits, said:

  ‘I reckon we maun go to th’ shop for our bread, an’ that’s a thing I never thought to come to so long as I lived.’

  Bessy looked up from her kneading, surprised:

  ‘I’m sure, I’m noan going to eat their nasty stuff. What for do ye want to get baker’s bread, aunt? This dough will rise as high as a kite in a south wind.’

  ‘I’m not up to kneading as I could do once; it welly breaks my back; and when thou’rt off in London, I reckon we maun buy our bread, first time in my life.’

  ‘I’m not a-going to London,’ said Bessy, kneading away with fresh resolution, and growing very red, either with the idea or the exertion.

  ‘But our Ben is going partner wi’ a great London lawyer, and thou know’st he’ll not tarry long but what he’ll fetch thee.’

  ‘Now, aunt,’ said Bessy, stripping her arms of the dough, but still not looking up, ‘if that’s all, don’t fret yourself. Ben will have twenty minds in his head afore he settles, eyther in business or in wedlock. I sometimes wonder,’ she said, with increasing vehemence, ‘why I go on thinking on him; for I dunnot think he thinks on me, when I’m out o’ sight. I’ve a month’s mind to try and forget him this time when he leaves us – that I have!’

  ‘For shame, wench! and he to be planning and purposing all for thy sake. It wur only yesterday as he wur talking to thy uncle, and mapping it out so clever; only thou seest, wench, it’ll be dree work for us when both thee and him is gone.’

  The old woman began to cry the kind of tearless cry of the aged. Bessy hastened to comfort her; and the two talked, and grieved, and hoped, and planned for the days that now were to be, till they ended, the one in being consoled, the other in being secretly happy.

  Nathan and his son came back from Highminster that evening, with their business transacted in the roundabout way, which was most satisfactory to the old man. If he had thought it necessary to take half as much pains in ascertaining the truth of the plausible details by which his son bore out the story of the offered partnership, as he did in trying to get his money conveyed to London in the most secure manner, it would have been well for him. But he knew nothing of all this, and acted in the way which satisfied his anxiety best. He came home tired, but content; not in such high spirits as on the night before, but as easy in his mind as he could be on the eve of his son’s departure. Bessy, pleasantly agitated by her aunt’s tale of the morning of her cousin’s true love for her – what ardently we wish we long believe – and the plan which was to end in their marriage – end to her, the woman, at least – Bessy looked almost pretty in her bright, blushing comeliness, and more than once, as she moved about from kitchen to dairy, Benjamin pulled her towards him, and gave her a kiss. To all such proceedings the old couple were wilfully blind; and, as night drew on, every one became sadder and quieter, thinking of the parting that was to be on the morrow. As the hours slipped away
, Bessy, too, became subdued; and, by-and-by, her simple cunning was exerted to get Benjamin to sit down next his mother, whose very heart was yearning after him, as Bessy saw. When once her child was placed by her side, and she had got possession of his hand, the old woman kept stroking it, and murmuring long unused words of endearment, such as she had spoken to him while he was yet a little child. But all this was wearisome to him. As long as he might play with, and plague, and caress Bessy, he had not been sleepy; but now he yawned loudly. Bessy could have boxed his ears for not curbing this gaping; at any rate, he need not have done it so openly – so almost ostentatiously. His mother was more pitiful.

  ‘Thou’rt tired, my lad!’ said she, putting her hand fondly on his shoulder; but it fell off, as he stood up suddenly, and said:

  ‘Yes, deuced tired! I’m off to bed.’ And with a rough careless kiss all round, even to Bessy, as if he was ‘deuced tired’ of playing the lover, he was gone; leaving the three to gather up their thoughts slowly, and follow him up stairs.

  He seemed almost impatient at them for rising betimes to see him off the next morning, and made no more of a goodbye than some such speech as this: ‘Well, good folk, when next I see you, I hope you’ll have merrier faces than you have to-day. Why, you might be going to a funeral; it’s enough to scare a man from the place; you look quite ugly to what you did last night, Bess.’

  He was gone; and they turned into the house, and settled to the long day’s work without many words about their loss. They had no time for unnecessary talking, indeed, for much had been left undone, during his short visit, that ought to have been done; and they had now to work double tides. Hard work was their comfort for many a long day.

  For some time, Benjamin’s letters, if not frequent, were full of exultant accounts of his well-doing. It is true that the details of his prosperity were somewhat vague; but the fact was broadly and unmistakably stated. Then came longer pauses; shorter letters, altered in tone. About a year after he had left them, Nathan received a letter, which bewildered and irritated him exceedingly. Something had gone wrong – what, Benjamin did not say – but the letter ended with a request that was almost a demand, for the remainder of his father’s savings, whether in the stocking or the bank. Now, the year had not been prosperous with Nathan; there had been an epidemic among cattle, and he had suffered along with his neighbours; and, moreover, the price of cows, when he had bought some to repair his wasted stock, was higher than he had ever remembered it before. The fifteen pounds in the stocking, which Benjamin left, had diminished to little more than three; and to have that required of him in so peremptory a manner! Before Nathan imparted the contents of this letter to any one (Bessy and her aunt had gone to market on a neighbour’s cart that day), he got pen and ink and paper, and wrote back an ill-spelt, but very explicit and stern negative. Benjamin had had his portion; and if he could not make it do, so much the worse for him; his father had no more to give him. That was the substance of the letter.

  The letter was written, directed and sealed, and given to the country postman, returning to Highminster after his day’s distribution and collection of letters, before Hester and Bessy came back from market. It had been a pleasant day of neighbourly meeting and sociable gossip: prices had been high, and they were in good spirits, only agreeably tired, and full of small pieces of news. It was some time before they found out how flatly all their talk fell on the ears of the stay-at-home listener. But, when they saw that his depression was caused by something beyond their powers of accounting for by any little every-day cause, they urged him to tell them what was the matter. His anger had not gone off. It had rather increased by dwelling upon it, and he spoke it out in good resolute terms; and, long ere he had ended, the two women were as sad, if not as angry, as himself. Indeed, it was many days before either feeling wore away in the minds of those who entertained them. Bessy was the soonest comforted, because she found a vent for her sorrow in action; action that was half as a kind of compensation for many a sharp word that she had spoken, when her cousin had done anything to displease her on his last visit, and half because she believed that he never could have written such a letter to his father, unless his want of money had been very pressing and real; though how he could ever have wanted money so soon, after such a heap of it had been given to him, was more than she could justly say. Bessy got out all her savings of little presents of sixpences and shillings, ever since she had been a child, —of all the money she had gained for the eggs of two hens, called her own; she put the whole together, and it was above two pounds – two pounds five and sevenpence, to speak accurately – and, leaving out the penny as a nest-egg for her future savings, she made up the rest in a little parcel, and sent it, with a note, to Benjamin’s address in London:

  ‘From a well-wisher.

  ‘DR BENJAMIN, —Unkle has lost 2 cows and a vast of monney.

  He is a good deal Angored, but more Troubled. So no more at present. Hopeing this will finding you well As it leaves us. Tho’ lost to Site, To Memory Dear. Repayment not kneeded.

  ‘Your effectonet cousin,

  ‘ELIZABETH ROSE.’

  When this packet was once fairly sent off, Bessy began to sing again over her work. She never expected the mere form of acknowledgment; indeed, she had such faith in the carrier (who took parcels to York, whence they were forwarded to London by coach), that she felt sure he would go on purpose to London to deliver anything intrusted to him, if he had not full confidence in the person, persons, coach and horses, to whom he committed it. Therefore she was not anxious that she did not hear of its arrival. ‘Giving a thing to a man as one knows,’ said she to herself, ‘is a vast different to poking a thing through a hole into a box, th’ inside of which one has never clapped eyes on; and yet letters get safe some ways or another.’ (This belief in the infallibility of the post was destined to a shock before long.) But she had a secret yearning for Benjamin’s thanks, and some of the old words of love that she had been without so long. Nay, she even thought – when, day after day, week after week, passed by without a line – that he might be winding up his affairs in that weary, wasteful London, and coming back to Nab-end to thank her in person.

  One day – her aunt was up stairs, inspecting the summer’s make of cheeses, her uncle out in the fields – the postman brought a letter into the kitchen to Bessy. A country postman, even now, is not much pressed for time, and in those days there were but few letters to distribute, and they were only sent out from Highminster once a week into the district in which Nab-end was situated; and on those occasions, the letter-carrier usually paid morning calls on the various people for whom he had letters. So, half standing by the dresser, half sitting on it, he began to rummage out his bag. ‘It’s a queerlike thing I’ve got for Nathan this time. I am afraid it will bear ill news in it, for there’s “Dead Letter Office” stamped on the top of it.’

  ‘Lord save us!’ said Bessy, and sat down on the nearest chair, as white as a sheet. In an instant, however, she was up, and, snatching the ominous letter out of the man’s hands, she pushed him before her out of the house, and said, ‘Be off wi’ thee, afore aunt comes down’; and ran past him as hard as she could, till she reached the field where she expected to find her uncle.

  ‘Uncle,’ said she, breathless, ‘what is it? Oh, uncle, speak! Is he dead?’

  Nathan’s hands trembled, and his eyes dazzled. ‘Take it,’ he said, ‘and tell me what it is.’

  ‘It’s a letter – it’s from you to Benjamin, it is – and there’s words written on it, “Not known at the address given”; so they’ve sent it back to the writer – that’s you, uncle. Oh, it gave me such a start, with them nasty words written outside!’

  Nathan had taken the letter back into his own hands, and was turning it over, while he strove to understand what the quick-witted Bessy had picked up at a glance. But he arrived at a different conclusion.

  ‘He’s dead!’ said he. ‘The lad is dead, and he never knowed how as I were sorry I wrote to ’u
n so sharp. My lad! my lad!’ Nathan sat down on the ground where he stood, and covered his face with his old, withered hands. The letter returned to him was one which he had written, with infinite pains and at various times, to tell his child, in kinder words and at greater length than he had done before, the reasons why he could not send him the money demanded. And now Benjamin was dead; nay, the old man immediately jumped to the conclusion that his child had been starved to death, without money, in a wild, wide, strange place. All he could say at first was:

  ‘My heart, Bess – my heart is broken!’ And he put his hand to his side, still keeping his shut eyes covered with the other, as though he never wished to see the light of day again. Bessy was down by his side in an instant, holding him in her arms, chafing and kissing him.

  ‘It’s noan so bad, uncle; he’s not dead; the letter does not say that, dunnot think it. He’s flitted from that lodging, and the lazy tykes dunna know where to find him; and so, they just send y’ back th’ letter, instead of trying fra’ house to house, as Mark Benson would. I’ve always heerd tell on south country folk for laziness. He’s noan dead, uncle; he’s just flitted, and he’ll let us know afore long where he’s getten to. May-be it’s a cheaper place, for that lawyer has cheated him, ye reck’let, and he’ll be trying to live for as little as he can, that’s all, uncle. Dunnot take on so, for it doesna say he’s dead.’