Ruth, Elizabeth Gaskell [read this if TXT] 📗

disagreeable necessity! Better speak as little about such things as possible; other people can be found to arrange all the dirty work. Neither you nor I would like to soil our fingers by it, I am sure. Four thousand pounds are in Mr. Pilson’s hands, and I shall never inquire what becomes of them; they may, very probably, be absorbed in the law expenses, you know. I shall let it be clearly understood from the hustings that I most decidedly disapprove of bribery, and leave the rest to Hickson’s management. He is accustomed to these sort of things; I am not.”

Mr. Bradshaw was rather perplexed by this want of bustling energy on the part of the new candidate; and if it had not been for the four thousand pounds aforesaid, would have doubted whether Mr. Donne cared sufficiently for the result of the election. Jemima thought differently. She watched her father’s visitor attentively, with something like the curious observation which a naturalist bestows on a new species of animal.

“Do you know what Mr. Donne reminds me of, mamma?” said she, one day, as the two sat at work, while the gentlemen were absent canvassing.

“No! he is not like anybody I ever saw. He quite frightens me, by being so ready to open the door for me if I am going out of the room, and by giving me a chair when I come in. I never saw any one like him. Who is it, Jemima?”

“Not any person—not any human being, mamma,” said Jemima, half smiling. “Do you remember our stopping at Wakefield once, on our way to Scarborough, and there were horse-races going on somewhere, and some of the racers were in the stables at the inn where we dined?”

“Yes! I remember it; but what about that?”

“Why, Richard, somehow, knew one of the jockeys, and, as we were coming in from our ramble through the town, this man, or boy, asked us to look at one of the racers he had the charge of.”

“Well, my dear?”

“Well, mamma! Mr. Donne is like that horse!”

“Nonsense, Jemima; you must not say so. I don’t know what your father would say if he heard you likening Mr. Donne to a brute.”

“Brutes are sometimes very beautiful, mamma. I am sure I should think it a compliment to be likened to a racehorse, such as the one we saw. But the thing in which they are alike, is the sort of repressed eagerness in both.”

“Eager! Why, I should say there never was any one cooler than Mr. Donne. Think of the trouble your papa has had this month past, and then remember the slow way in which Mr. Donne moves when he is going out to canvass, and the low, drawling voice in which he questions the people who bring him intelligence. I can see your papa standing by, ready to shake them to get out their news.”

“But Mr. Donne’s questions are always to the point, and force out the grain without the chaff. And look at him, if any one tells him ill news about the election! Have you never seen a dull red light come into his eyes? That is like my racehorse. Her flesh quivered all over, at certain sounds and noises which had some meaning to her; but she stood quite still, pretty creature! Now, Mr. Donne is just as eager as she was, though he may be too proud to show it. Though he seems so gentle, I almost think he is very headstrong in following out his own will.”

“Well! don’t call him like a horse again, for I am sure papa would not like it. Do you know, I thought you were going to say he was like little Leonard, when you asked me who he was like.”

“Leonard! O mamma! he is not in the least like Leonard. He is twenty times more like my racehorse.”

“Now, my dear Jemima, do be quiet. Your father thinks racing so wrong, that I am sure he would be very seriously displeased if he were to hear you.”

To return to Mr. Bradshaw, and to give one more of his various reasons for wishing to take Mr. Donne to Abermouth. The wealthy Eccleston manufacturer was uncomfortably impressed with an indefinable sense of inferiority to his visitor. It was not in education, for Mr. Bradshaw was a well-educated man; it was not in power, for, if he chose, the present object of Mr. Donne’s life might be utterly defeated; it did not arise from anything overbearing in manner, for Mr. Donne was habitually polite and courteous, and was just now anxious to propitiate his host, whom he looked upon as a very useful man. Whatever this sense of inferiority arose from, Mr. Bradshaw was anxious to relieve himself from it, and imagined that if he could make more display of his wealth his object would be obtained. Now, his house in Eccleston was old-fashioned and ill-calculated to exhibit money’s worth. His mode of living, though strained to a high pitch just at this time, he became aware was no more than Mr. Donne was accustomed to every day of his life. The first day at dessert, some remark (some opportune remark, as Mr. Bradshaw, in his innocence, had thought) was made regarding the price of pine-apples, which was rather exorbitant that year, and Mr. Donne asked Mrs. Bradshaw, with quiet surprise, if they had no pinery, as if to be without a pinery were indeed a depth of pitiable destitution. In fact, Mr. Donne had been born and cradled in all that wealth could purchase, and so had his ancestors before him for so many generations, that refinement and luxury seemed the natural condition of man, and they that dwelt without were in the position of monsters. The absence was noticed; but not the presence.

Now, Mr. Bradshaw knew that the house and grounds of Eagle’s Crag wore exorbitantly dear, and yet he really thought of purchasing them. And as one means of exhibiting his wealth, and so raising himself up to the level of Mr. Donne, he thought that if he could take the latter down to Abermouth, and show him the place for which, “because his little girls had taken a fancy to it,” he was willing to give the fancy price of fourteen thousand pounds, he should at last make those half-shut dreamy eyes open wide, and their owner confess that, in wealth at least, the Eccleston manufacturer stood on a par with him. All these mingled motives caused the determination which made Ruth sit in the little inn parlour of Abermouth during the wild storm’s passage.

She wondered if she had fulfilled all Mr. Bradshaw’s directions. She looked at the letter. Yes! everything was done. And now home with her news, through the wet lane, where the little pools by the roadside reflected the deep blue sky and the round white clouds with even deeper blue and clearer white; and the rain-drops hung so thick on the trees, that even a little bird’s flight was enough to shake them down in a bright shower as of rain. When she told the news, Mary exclaimed—

“Oh, how charming! Then we shall see this new member after all!” while Elizabeth added—

“Yes! I shall like to do that. But where must we be? Papa will want the dining-room and this room, and where must we sit?”

“Oh!” said Ruth, “in the dressing-room next to my room. All that your papa wants always, is that you are quiet and out of the way.”