Ruth, Elizabeth Gaskell [read this if TXT] 📗

RUTH BECOMES A GOVERNESS IN MR. BRADSHAW’S FAMILY

One afternoon, not long after this, Mr. and Miss Benson set off to call upon a farmer, who attended the chapel, but lived at some distance from the town. They intended to stay to tea if they were invited, and Ruth and Sally were left to spend a long afternoon together. At first, Sally was busy in her kitchen, and Ruth employed herself in carrying her baby out into the garden. It was now nearly a year since she came to the Bensons’; it seemed like yesterday, and yet as if a lifetime had gone between. The flowers were budding now, that were all in bloom when she came down, on the first autumnal morning, into the sunny parlour. The yellow jessamine that was then a tender plant, had now taken firm root in the soil, and was sending out strong shoots; the wall-flowers, which Miss Benson had sown on the wall a day or two after her arrival, were scenting the air with their fragrant flowers. Ruth knew every plant now; it seemed as though she had always lived here, and always known the inhabitants of the house. She heard Sally singing her accustomed song in the kitchen, a song she never varied, over her afternoon’s work. It began—

“As I was going to Derby, sir, Upon a market-day.”

And, if music is a necessary element in a song, perhaps I had better call it by some other name.

But the strange change was in Ruth herself. She was conscious of it, though she could not define it, and did not dwell upon it. Life had become significant and full of duty to her. She delighted in the exercise of her intellectual powers, and liked the idea of the infinite amount of which she was ignorant; for it was a grand pleasure to learn,—to crave, and be satisfied. She strove to forget what had gone before this last twelve months. She shuddered up from contemplating it; it was like a bad, unholy dream. And yet, there was a strange yearning kind of love for the father of the child whom she pressed to her heart, which came, and she could not bid it begone as sinful, it was so pure and natural, even when thinking of it as in the sight of God. Little Leonard cooed to the flowers, and stretched after their bright colours; and Ruth laid him on the dry turf, and pelted him with the gay petals. He chinked and crowed with laughing delight, and clutched at her cap, and pulled it off. Her short rich curls were golden-brown in the slanting sunlight, and by their very shortness made her more childlike. She hardly seemed as if she could be the mother of the noble babe over whom she knelt, now snatching kisses, now matching his cheek with rose-leaves. All at once, the bells of the old church struck the hour, and far away, high up in the air, began slowly to play the old tune of “Life, let us cherish;” they had played it for years—for the life of man—and it always sounded fresh, and strange, and aerial. Ruth was still in a moment, she knew not why; and the tears came into her eyes as she listened. When it was ended, she kissed her baby, and bade God bless him.

Just then Sally came out, dressed for the evening, with a leisurely look about her. She had done her work, and she and Ruth were to drink tea together in the exquisitely clean kitchen; but while the kettle was boiling, she came out to enjoy the flowers. She gathered a piece of southern-wood, and stuffed it up her nose, by way of smelling it.

“Whatten you call this in your country?” asked she.

“Old-man,” replied Ruth.

“We call it here lad’s-love. It and peppermint drops always reminds me of going to church in the country. Here! I’ll get you a black-currant leaf to put in the teapot. It gives it a flavour. We had bees once against this wall; but when missus died, we forgot to tell ‘em and put ‘em in mourning, and, in course, they swarmed away without our knowing, and the next winter came a hard frost, and they died. Now, I dare say, the water will be boiling; and it’s time for little master there to come in, for the dew is falling. See, all the daisies is shutting themselves up.”

Sally was most gracious as a hostess. She quite put on her company manners to receive Ruth in the kitchen. They laid Leonard to sleep on the sofa in the parlour, that they might hear him the more easily, and then they sat quietly down to their sewing by the bright kitchen fire. Sally was, as usual, the talker; and, as usual, the subject was the family of whom for so many years she had formed a part.

“Ay! things was different when I was a girl,” quoth she. “Eggs was thirty for a shilling, and butter only sixpence a pound. My wage when I came here was but three pound, and I did on it, and was always clean and tidy, which is more than many a lass can say now who gets seven and eight pound a year; and tea was kept for an afternoon drink, and pudding was eaten afore meat in them days, and the upshot was, people paid their debts better; ay, ay! we’n gone backwards, and we thinken we’n gone forrards.”

After shaking her head a little over the degeneracy of the times, Sally returned to a part of the subject on which she thought she had given Ruth a wrong idea. “You’ll not go for to think now that I’ve not more than three pound a year. I’ve a deal above that now. First of all, old missus gave me four pound, for she said I were worth it, and I thought in my heart that I were; so I took it without more ado; but after her death, Master Thurstan and Miss Faith took a fit of spending, and says they to me, one day as I carried tea in, ‘Sally, we think your wages ought to be raised.’ ‘What matter what you think!’ said I, pretty sharp, for I thought they’d ha’ shown more respect to missus, if they’d let things stand as they were in her time; and they’d gone and moved the sofa away from the wall to where it stands now, already that very day. So I speaks up sharp, and says I, ‘As long as I’m content, I think it’s no business of yours to be meddling wi’ me and my money matters.’ ‘But,’ says Miss Faith (she’s always the one to speak first if you’ll notice, though it’s master that comes in and clinches the matter with some reason she’d never ha’ thought of—he were always a sensible lad), ‘Sally, all the servants in the town have six pound and better, and you have as hard a place as any of ‘em.’ ‘Did you ever hear me grumble about my work that you talk about it in that way? wait till I grumble,’ says I, ‘but don’t meddle wi’ me till then.’ So I flung off in a huff; but in the course of the evening, Master Thurstan came in and sat down in the kitchen, and he’s such winning ways he wiles one over to anything; and besides, a notion had come into my head—now you’ll not tell,” said she, glancing round the room, and hitching her chair nearer to Ruth in a confidential manner; Ruth promised, and Sally went on—

“I thought I should like to be an heiress wi’ money, and leave it all to Master and Miss Faith; and I thought if I’d six pound a year, I could, may be, get to be an