Ruth, Elizabeth Gaskell [read this if TXT] 📗

through the untrimmed garden, full of the pale-coloured flowers of spring. A spider had spread her web over the front door. The sight of this conveyed a sense of desolation to Ruth’s heart; she thought it was possible the state-entrance had never been used since her father’s dead body had been borne forth, and without speaking a word, she turned abruptly away, and went round the house to another door. Mr. Bellingham followed without questioning, little understanding her feelings, but full of admiration for the varying expression called out upon her face.

The old woman had not yet returned from church, or from the weekly gossip or neighbourly tea which succeeded. The husband sat in the kitchen, spelling the psalms for the day in his Prayer-book, and reading the words out aloud—a habit he had acquired from the double solitude of his life, for he was deaf. He did not hear the quiet entrance of the pair, and they were struck with the sort of ghostly echo which seems to haunt half-furnished and uninhabited houses. The verses he was reading were the following:—

“Why art thou so vexed, O my soul: and why art thou so disquieted within me? O put thy trust in God: for I will yet thank him, which is the help of my countenance, and my God.”

And when he had finished he shut the book, and sighed with the satisfaction of having done his duty. The words of holy trust, though, perhaps, they were not fully understood, carried a faithful peace down into the depths of his soul. As he looked up, he saw the young couple standing in the middle of the floor. He pushed his iron-rimmed spectacles on to his forehead, and rose to greet the daughter of his old master and ever-honoured mistress.

“God bless thee, lass! God bless thee! My old eyes are glad to see thee again.”

Ruth sprang forward to shake the horny hand stretched forward in the action of blessing. She pressed it between both of hers, as she rapidly poured out questions. Mr. Bellingham was not altogether comfortable at seeing one whom he had already begun to appropriate as his own, so tenderly familiar with a hard-featured, meanly-dressed day-labourer. He sauntered to the window, and looked out into the grass-grown farmyard; but he could not help overhearing some of the conversation, which seemed to him carried on too much in the tone of equality. “And who’s yon?” asked the old labourer at last. “Is he your sweetheart? Your missis’s son, I reckon. He’s a spruce young chap, anyhow.” Mr. Bellingham’s “blood of all the Howards” rose and tingled about his ears, so that he could not hear Ruth’s answer. It began by “Hush, Thomas; pray hush!” but how it went on he did not catch. The idea of his being Mrs. Mason’s son! It was really too ridiculous; but, like most things which are “too ridiculous,” it made him very angry. He was hardly himself again when Ruth shyly came to the window-recess and asked him if he would like to see the house-place, into which the front-door entered; many people thought it very pretty, she said, half-timidly, for his face had unconsciously assumed a hard and haughty expression, which he could not instantly soften down. He followed her, however; but before he left the kitchen he saw the old man standing, looking at Ruth’s companion with a strange, grave air of dissatisfaction.

They went along one or two zig-zag damp-smelling stone passages, and then entered the house-place, or common sitting-room for a farmer’s family in that part of the country. The front door opened into it, and several other apartments issued out of it, such as the dairy, the state bedroom (which was half-parlour as well), and a small room which had been appropriated to the late Mrs. Hilton, where she sat, or more frequently lay, commanding through the open door the comings and goings of her household. In those days the house-place had been a cheerful room, full of life, with the passing to and fro of husband, child, and servants; with a great merry wood-fire crackling and blazing away every evening, and hardly let out in the very heat of summer; for with the thick stone walls, and the deep window-seats, and the drapery of vine-leaves and ivy, that room, with its flag-floor, seemed always to want the sparkle and cheery warmth of a fire. But now the green shadows from without seemed to have become black in the uninhabited desolation. The oaken shovel-board, the heavy dresser, and the carved cupboards, were now dull and damp, which were formerly polished up to the brightness of a looking-glass where the fire-blaze was for ever glinting; they only added to the oppressive gloom; the flag-floor was wet with heavy moisture. Ruth stood gazing into the room, seeing nothing of what was present. She saw a vision of former days—an evening in the days of her childhood; her father sitting in the “master’s corner” near the fire, sedately smoking his pipe, while he dreamily watched his wife and child; her mother reading to her, as she sat on a little stool at her feet. It was gone—all gone into the land of shadows; but for the moment it seemed so present in the old room, that Ruth believed her actual life to be the dream. Then, ‘still silent, she went on into her mother’s parlour. But there, the bleak look of what had once been full of peace and mother’s love, struck cold on her heart. She uttered a cry, and threw herself down by the sofa, hiding her face in her hands, while her frame quivered with her repressed sobs.

“Dearest Ruth, don’t give way so. It can do no good; it cannot bring back the dead,” said Mr. Bellingham, distressed at witnessing her distress.

“I know it cannot,” murmured Ruth; “and that is why I cry. I cry because nothing will ever bring them back again.” She sobbed afresh, but more gently, for his kind words soothed her, and softened, if they could not take away, her sense of desolation.

“Come away; I cannot have you stay here, full of painful associations as these rooms must be. Come”—raising her with gentle violence—“show me your little garden you have often told me about. Near the window of this very room, is it not? See how well I remember everything you tell me.”

He led her round through the back part of the house into the pretty old-fashioned garden. There was a sunny border just under the windows, and clipped box and yew-trees by the grass-plat, further away from the house; and she prattled again of her childish adventures and solitary plays. When they turned round they saw the old man, who had hobbled out with the help of his stick, and was looking at them with the same grave, sad look of anxiety. Mr. Bellingham spoke rather sharply—

“Why does that old man follow us about in that way? It is excessively impertinent of him, I think.”

“Oh, don’t call old Thomas impertinent. He is so good and kind, he is like a father to me. I remember sitting on his knee many and many a time when I was a child, whilst he told me stories out of the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress.’ He taught me to suck up milk through a straw. Mamma was very fond of him, too. He used to sit with us always in the evenings when papa was away at market, for mamma was rather afraid of having no man in the house, and used to beg old Thomas to stay; and he would take me on his knee, and listen just as attentively as I did while mamma read aloud.”

“You don’t mean to say you have sat upon that old fellow’s knee?”

“Oh, yes! many and many a time.”

Mr. Bellingham looked graver than he had done while witnessing Ruth’s passionate emotion in her mother’s room. But he lost his sense of indignity in admiration of his companion as she wandered among the flowers, seeking for favourite bushes or plants, to which some history or remembrance was attached. She wound in and out in natural, graceful, wavy lines between the luxuriant and overgrown shrubs, which were fragrant with a leafy smell of spring growth; she went on, careless of watching eyes, indeed unconscious, for the time, of their existence. Once she stopped to take hold of a spray of jessamine, and softly kiss it; it had been her mother’s favourite flower.

Old Thomas was standing by the horse-mount, and was also an observer of all her goings-on. But, while Mr. Bellingham’s feeling was that of passionate admiration mingled with a selfish kind of love, the old man gazed with tender anxiety, and his lips moved in words of blessing—

“She’s a pretty creature, with a glint of her mother about her; and she’s the same kind lass as ever. Not a bit set up with yon fine manty-maker’s shop she’s in. I misdoubt that young fellow though, for all she called him a real gentleman, and checked me when I asked if he was her sweetheart. If his are not sweetheart’s looks, I’ve forgotten all my young days. Here! they’re going, I suppose. Look! he wants her to go without a word to the old man; but she is none so changed as that, I reckon.”

Not Ruth, indeed! She never perceived the dissatisfied expression of Mr. Bellingham’s countenance, visible to the old man’s keen eye; but came running up to Thomas to send her love to his wife, and to shake him many times by the hand.

“Tell Mary I’ll make her such a fine gown, as soon as ever I set up for myself; it shall be all in the fashion, big gigot sleeves, that she shall not know herself in them! Mind you tell her that, Thomas, will you?”

“Ay, that I will, lass; and I reckon she’ll be pleased to hear thou hast not forgotten thy old merry ways. The Lord bless thee—the Lord lift up the light of His countenance upon thee.”

Ruth was halfway towards the impatient Mr. Bellingham when her old friend called her back. He longed to give her a warning of the danger that he thought she was in, and yet he did not know how. When she came up, all he could think of to say was a text; indeed, the language of the Bible was the language in which he thought, whenever his ideas went beyond practical everyday life into expressions of emotion or feeling. “My dear, remember the devil goeth about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour; remember that, Ruth.”

The words fell on her ear, but gave no definite idea. The utmost they suggested was the remembrance of the dread she felt as a child when this verse came into her mind, and how she used to imagine a lion’s head with glaring eyes peering out of the bushes in a dark shady part of the wood, which, for this reason, she had always avoided, and even now could hardly think of without a shudder. She never imagined that the grim warning related to the handsome young man who awaited her with a countenance beaming with love, and tenderly drew her hand within his arm.

The old man sighed as he watched them away. “The Lord may help her to guide her steps aright. He may. But I’m afeard she’s treading in perilous places. I’ll put my missis up to going to the town and getting speech of her, and telling her a bit of her danger. An old motherly woman like our Mary will set about it better nor a stupid fellow like me.”

The poor old labourer prayed long and earnestly that night for Ruth. He called it “wrestling for her soul;” and I think that his prayers were heard, for “God