The Complete Short Stories of Elizabeth Gaskell. Elizabeth Gaskell
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father did not understand her; her husband did, and placed his strong helping arm round her waist, and blessed her.
“We will all go together, Nest,” said he. “But where?” and he looked up at the storm-tossed clouds coming up from windward.
“It is a dirty night,” said Ellis, turning his head round to speak to his companions at last. “But never fear, we’ll weather it!” And he made for the place where his vessel was moored. Then he stopped and thought a moment.
“Stay here!” said he, addressing his companions. “I may meet folk, and I shall, maybe, have to hear and to speak. You wait here till I come back for you.” So they sat down close together in a corner of the path.
“Let me look at him, Nest!” said Owen.
She took her little dead son out from under her shawl; they looked at his waxen face long and tenderly; kissed it, and covered it up reverently and softly.
“Nest,” said Owen, at last, “I feel as though my father’s spirit had been near us, and as if it had bent over our poor little one. A strange chilly air met me as I stooped over him. I could fancy the spirit of our pure, blameless child guiding my father’s safe over the paths of the sky to the gates of heaven, and escaping those accursed dogs of hell that were darting up from the north in pursuit of souls not five minutes since.
“Don’t talk so, Owen,” said Nest, curling up to him in the darkness of the copse. “Who knows what may be listening?”
The pair were silent, in a kind of nameless terror, till they heard Ellis Pritchard’s loud whisper. “Where are ye? Come along, soft and steady. There were folk about even now, and the Squire is missed, and madam in a fright.”
They went swiftly down to the little harbour, and embarked on board Ellis’s boat. The sea heaved and rocked even there; the torn clouds went hurrying overhead in a wild tumultuous manner.
They put out into the bay; still in silence, except when some word of command was spoken by Ellis, who took the management of the vessel. They made for the rocky shore, where Owen’s boat had been moored. It was not there. It had broken loose and disappeared.
Owen sat down and covered his face. This last event, so simple and natural in itself, struck on his excited and superstitious mind in an extraordinary manner. He had hoped for a certain reconciliation, so to say, by laying his father and his child both in one grave. But now it appeared to him as if there was to be no forgiveness; as if his father revolted even in death against any such peaceful union. Ellis took a practical view of the case. If the Squire’s body was found drifting about in a boat known to belong to his son, it would create terrible suspicion as to the manner of his death. At one time in the evening, Ellis had thought of persuading Owen to let him bury the Squire in a sailor’s grave; or, in other words, to sew him up in a spare sail, and weighting it well, sink it for ever. He had not broached the subject, from a certain fear of Owen’s passionate repugnance to the plan; otherwise, if he had consented, they might have returned to Penmorfa, and passively awaited the course of events, secure of Owen’s succession to Bodowen, sooner or later; or if Owen was too much overwhelmed by what had happened, Ellis would have advised him to go away for a short time, and return when the buzz and the talk was over.
Now it was different. It was absolutely necessary that they should leave the country for a time. Through those stormy waters they must plough their way that very night. Ellis had no fear – would have had no fear, at any rate, with Owen as he had been a week, a day ago; but with Owen wild, despairing, helpless, fate pursued, what could he do?
They sailed into the tossing darkness, and were never more seen of men.
The house of Bodowen has sunk into damp, dark ruins; and a Saxon stranger holds the lands of the Griffiths.
*****
You cannot think how kindly Mrs Dawson thanked Miss Duncan for writing and reading this story. She shook my poor, pale governess so tenderly by the hand that the tears came into her eyes, and the colour to her cheeks.
“I though you had been so kind; I liked hearing about Lady Ludlow; I fancied, perhaps, I could do something to give a little pleasure,” were the half-finished sentences Miss Duncan stammered out. I am sure it was the wish to earn similar kind words from Mrs Dawson, that made Mrs Preston try and rummage through her memory to see if she could not recollect some fact, or event, or history, which might interested Mrs Dawson and the little party that gathered round her sofa. Mrs Preston it was who told us the following tale:
Half a Life-Time Ago
Chapter 1
Half a lifetime ago, there lived in one of the Westmoreland dales a single woman, of the name of Susan Dixon. She was owner of the small farmhouse where she resided, and of some thirty or forty acres of land by which it was surrounded. She had also an hereditary right to a sheep walk, extending to the wild fells that overhang Blea Tarn. In the language of the country she was a Stateswoman. Her house is yet to be seen on the Oxenfell road, between Skelwith and Coniston. You go along a moorland track, made by the carts that occasionally came for turf from the Oxenfell. A brook babbles and brattles by the wayside, giving you a sense of companionship, which relieves the deep solitude in which this way is usually traversed. Some miles on this side of Coniston there is a farmstead – a grey stone house, and a square of farm buildings surrounding a green space of rough turf, in the midst of which stands a mighty, funereal umbrageous yew, making a solemn shadow, as of death, in the very heart and centre of the light and heat of the brightest summer day. On the side away from the house, this yard slopes down to a dark brown pool, which is supplied with fresh water from the overflowings of a stone cistern, into which some rivulet of the brook before mentioned continually and melodiously falls bubbling. The cattle drink out of this cistern. The household bring their pitchers and fill them with drinking water by a dilatory, yet pretty, process. The water carrier brings with her a leaf of the hound’s-tongue fern, and, inserting it in the crevice of the grey rock, makes a cool, green spout for the sparkling stream.
The house is no specimen, at the present day, of what it was in the lifetime of Susan Dixon. Then, every small diamond pane in the windows glittered with cleanliness. You might have eaten off the floor; you could see yourself in the pewter plates and the polished oaken awmry, or dresser, of the state kitchen into which you entered. Few strangers penetrated further than this room. Once or twice, wandering tourists, attracted by the lonely picturesqueness of the situation, and the exquisite cleanliness of the house itself, made their way into this house place, and offered money enough (as they thought) to tempt the hostess to receive them as lodgers. They would give no trouble, they said; they would be out rambling or sketching all day long; would be perfectly content with a share of the food which she provided for herself; or would procure what they required from the Waterhead Inn at Coniston. But no liberal sum – no fair words – moved her from her stony manner, or her monotonous tone of indifferent refusal. No persuasion could induce her to