Ruth, Elizabeth Gaskell [read this if TXT] 📗

Here! you fellow, take him up, d’ye see!” But the child’s hand had nervously clenched Ruth’s dress, and she would not have him disturbed. She carried her heavy burden very tenderly towards a mean little cottage indicated by the neighhours; an old crippled woman was coming out of the door, shaking all over with agitation.

“Dear heart!” said she, “he’s the last of ‘em all, and he’s gone afore me.”

“Nonsense,” said Mr. Bellingham, “the boy is alive, and likely to live.”

But the old woman was helpless and hopeless, and insisted on believing that her grandson was dead; and dead he would have been if it had not been for Ruth, and one or two of the more sensible neighbours, who, under Mr. Bellingham’s directions, bustled about, and did all that was necessary until animation was restored.

“What a confounded time those people are in fetching the doctor!” said Mr. Bellingham to Ruth, between whom and himself a sort of silent understanding had sprung up from the circumstance of their having been the only two (besides mere children) who had witnessed the accident, and also the only two to whom a certain degree of cultivation had given the power of understanding each other’s thoughts and even each other’s words.

“It takes so much to knock an idea into such stupid people’s heads. They stood gaping and asking which doctor they were to go for, as if it signified whether it was Brown or Smith, so long as he had his wits about him. I have no more time to waste here, either; I was on the gallop when I caught sight of the lad; and, now he has fairly sobbed and opened his eyes, I see no use in my staying in this stifling atmosphere. May I trouble you with one thing? Will you be so good as to see that the little fellow has all that he wants? If you’ll allow me, I’ll leave you my purse,” continued he, giving it to Ruth, who was only too glad to have this power entrusted to her of procuring one or two requisites which she had perceived to be wanted. But she saw some gold between the network; she did not like the charge of such riches.

“I shall not want so much, really, sir. One sovereign will be plenty—more than enough. May I take that out, and I will give you back what is left of it when I see you again? or, perhaps, I had better send it to you, sir.

“I think you had better keep it all at present. Oh, what a horrid dirty place this is insufferable two minutes longer. You must not stay here; you’ll be poisoned with this abominable air. Come towards the door, I beg. Well, if you think one sovereign will he enough, I will take my purse; only, remember you apply to me if you think they want more.”

They were standing at the door, where some one was holding Mr. Bellingham’s horse. Ruth was looking at him with her earnest eyes (Mrs. Mason and her errands quite forgotten in the interest of the afternoon’s event), her whole thoughts bent upon rightly understanding and following out his wishes for the little boy’s welfare; and until now this had been the first object in his own mind. But at this moment the strong perception of Ruth’s exceeding beauty came again upon him. He almost lost the sense of what he was saying, he was so startled with admiration. The night before, he had not seen her eyes; and now they looked straight and innocently full at him, grave, earnest, and deep. But when she instinctively read the change in the expression of his countenance, she dropped her large white veiling lids; and he thought her face was lovelier still. The irresistible impulse seized him to arrange matters, so that he might see her again before long.

“No!” said he. “I see it would he better that you should keep the purse. Many things may be wanted for the lad which we cannot calculate upon now. If I remember rightly, there are three sovereigns and some loose change; I shall, perhaps, see you again in a few days, when, if there he any money left in the purse, you can restore it to me.”

“Oh, yes, sir,” said Ruth, alive to the magnitude of the wants to which she might have to administer, and yet rather afraid of the responsibility implied in the possession of so much money.

“Is there any chance of my meeting you again in this house?” asked he.

“I hope to come whenever I can, sir; but I must run in errand-times, and I don’t know when my turn may be.”

“Oh”—he did not fully understand this answer—“I should like to know how you think the boy is going on, if it is not giving you too much trouble; do you ever take walks?”

“Not for walking’s sake, sir.”

“Well,” said he, “you go to church, I suppose? Mrs. Mason does not keep you at work on Sundays; I trust?”

“Oh, no, sir. I go to church regularly.”

“Then, perhaps, you will be so good as to tell me what church you go to, and I will meet you there next Sunday afternoon?”

“I go to St. Nicholas’, sir. I will take care and bring you word how the boy is, and what doctor they get; and I will keep an account of the money I spend.”

“Very well, thank you. Remember, I trust to you.”

He meant that he relied on her promise to meet him; but Ruth thought that he was referring to the responsibility of doing the best she could for the child. He was going away, when a fresh thought struck him, and he turned back into the cottage once more, and addressed Ruth, with a half smile on his countenance–-

“It seems rather strange, but we have no one to introduce us; my name is Bellingham—yours is”—

“Ruth Hilton, sir,” she answered, in a low voice, for, now that the conversation no longer related to the boy, she felt shy and restrained.

He held out his hand to shake hers; and, just as she gave it to him, the old grandmother came tottering up to ask some question. The interruption jarred upon him, and made him once more keenly alive to the closeness of the air, and the squalor and dirt by which he was surrounded.

“My good woman,” said he to Nelly Brownson, “could you not keep your place a little neater and cleaner? It is more fit for pigs than human beings. The air in this room is quite offensive, and the dirt and filth is really disgraceful.” By this time he was mounted, and, bowing to Ruth, he rode away.

Then the old woman’s wrath broke out.

“Who may you be, that knows no better manners than to come into a poor woman’s house to abuse it?—fit for pigs, indeed! What d’ye call yon fellow?”

“He is Mr. Bellingham,” said Ruth, shocked at the old woman’s apparent ingratitude. “It was he that rode into the water to save your grandson. He would have been drowned but for Mr. Bellingham. I thought once they would both have been swept away by the current, it was so strong.”

“The river is none so deep, either,” the old woman said, anxious to diminish as much as possible the obligation she was under to one who had offended her. “Some one else would have saved him, if this fine young spark had never been here. He’s an orphan, and God watches over orphans, they say. I’d rather it had been any one else as had picked him out, than one who comes into a poor body’s house only to abuse it.”

“He did not come in only to abuse it,” said Ruth gently. “He came with little Tom; he only said it was not quite so clean as it might be.”

“What! you’re taking up the cry, are you? Wait till you are an old woman like me, crippled with rheumatiz, and a lad to see after like Tom, who is always in mud when he isn’t in water; and his food and mine to scrape together (God knows we’re often short, and do the best I can), and water to fetch up that steep brow.”

She stopped to cough; and Ruth judiciously changed the subject, and began to consult the old woman as to the wants of her grandson, in which consultation they were soon assisted by the medical man.

When Ruth had made one or two arrangements with a neighbour whom she asked to procure the most necessary things, and had heard from the doctor that all would be right in a day or two, she began to quake at the recollection of the length of time she had spent at Nelly Brownson’s, and to remember, with some affright, the strict watch kept by Mrs. Mason over her apprentices’ out-goings and incomings on working-days. She hurried off to the shops, and tried to recall her wandering thoughts to the respective merits of pink and blue as a match to lilac, found she had lost her patterns, and went home with ill-chosen things, and in a fit of despair at her own stupidity.

The truth was, that the afternoon’s adventure filled her mind; only the figure of Tom (who was now safe and likely to do well) was receding into the background, and that of Mr. Bellingham becoming more prominent than it had been. His spirited and natural action of galloping into the water to save the child, was magnified by Ruth into the most heroic deed of daring; his interest about the boy was tender, thoughtful benevolence in her eyes, and his careless liberality of money was fine generosity; for she forgot that generosity implies some degree of self-denial. She was gratified, too, by the power of dispensing comfort he had entrusted to her, and was busy with Alnaschar visions of wise expenditure, when the necessity of opening Mrs. Mason’s house-door summoned her back into actual present life, and the dread of an immediate scolding.

For this time, however, she was spared; but spared for such a reason that she would have been thankful for some blame in preference to her impunity. During her absence, Jenny’s difficulty of breathing had suddenly become worse, and the girls had, on their own responsibility, put her to bed, and were standing round her in dismay, when Mrs. Mason’s return home (only a few minutes before Ruth arrived) fluttered them back into the workroom.

And now all was confusion and hurry; a doctor to be sent for; a mind to be unburdened of directions for a dress to a forewoman, who was too ill to understand; scoldings to be scattered with no illiberal hand amongst a group of frightened girls, hardly sparing the poor invalid herself for her inopportune illness. In the middle of all this turmoil Ruth crept quietly to her place, with a heavy saddened heart at the indisposition of the gentle forewoman. She would gladly have nursed Jenny herself, and often longed to do it, but she could not be spared. Hands, unskilful in fine and delicate work, would be well enough qualified to tend the sick, until the mother arrived from home. Meanwhile, extra diligence was required in the workroom; and Ruth found no opportunity of going to see little Tom, or to fulfil the plans for making him and his grandmother more comfortable, which she had proposed to herself. She regretted her rash promise to Mr. Bellingham, of attending to the little boy’s welfare; all that she could do was done by means of Mrs. Mason’s servant, through whom she made inquiries, and sent the necessary help.

The subject of Jenny’s illness was the prominent one in the house. Ruth told of her own adventure, to be sure; but, when she