Authors: Elizabeth Gaskell
"She is no common person," said Mr Jones. "Still she is too young to
have the responsibility of such a serious case. Have you any idea
where his friends live, Mrs Morgan?"
"Indeed and I have. His mother, as haughty a lady as you would wish
to see, came travelling through Wales last year; she stopped here,
and, I warrant you, nothing was good enough for her; she was real
quality. She left some clothes and books behind her (for the maid was
almost as fine as the mistress, and little thought of seeing after
her lady's clothes, having a taste for going to see scenery along
with the man-servant), and we had several letters from her. I have
them locked in the drawers in the bar, where I keep such things."
"Well! I should recommend your writing to the lady, and telling her
her son's state."
"It would be a favour, Mr Jones, if you would just write it yourself.
English writing comes so strange to my pen."
The letter was written, and, in order to save time, Mr Jones took it
to the Llanglâs post-office.
Ruth put away every thought of the past or future; everything that
could unfit her for the duties of the present. Exceeding love
supplied the place of experience. She never left the room after the
first day; she forced herself to eat, because his service needed her
strength. She did not indulge in any tears, because the weeping she
longed for would make her less able to attend upon him. She watched,
and waited, and prayed: prayed with an utter forgetfulness of self,
only with a consciousness that God was all-powerful, and that he,
whom she loved so much, needed the aid of the Mighty One.
Day and night, the summer night, seemed merged into one. She lost
count of time in the hushed and darkened room. One morning Mrs Morgan
beckoned her out; and she stole on tiptoe into the dazzling gallery,
on one side of which the bedrooms opened.
"She's come," whispered Mrs Morgan, looking very much excited, and
forgetting that Ruth had never heard that Mrs Bellingham had been
summoned.
"Who is come?" asked Ruth. The idea of Mrs Mason flashed through her
mind—but with a more terrible, because a more vague dread, she heard
that it was his mother; the mother of whom he had always spoken as a
person whose opinion was to be regarded more than that of any other
individual.
"What must I do? Will she be angry with me?" said she, relapsing into
her child-like dependence on others; and feeling that even Mrs Morgan
was some one to stand between her and Mrs Bellingham.
Mrs Morgan herself was a little perplexed. Her morality was rather
shocked at the idea of a proper real lady like Mrs Bellingham
discovering that she had winked at the connexion between her son and
Ruth. She was quite inclined to encourage Ruth in her inclination
to shrink out of Mrs Bellingham's observation, an inclination which
arose from no definite consciousness of having done wrong, but
principally from the representations she had always heard of the
lady's awfulness. Mrs Bellingham swept into her son's room as if she
were unconscious what poor young creature had lately haunted it;
while Ruth hurried into some unoccupied bedroom, and, alone there,
she felt her self-restraint suddenly give way, and burst into the
saddest, most utterly wretched weeping she had ever known. She was
worn out with watching, and exhausted by passionate crying, and she
lay down on the bed and fell asleep. The day passed on; she slumbered
unnoticed and unregarded; she awoke late in the evening with a
sense of having done wrong in sleeping so long; the strain upon
her responsibility had not yet left her. Twilight was closing fast
around; she waited until it had become night, and then she stole down
to Mrs Morgan's parlour.
"If you please, may I come in?" asked she.
Jenny Morgan was doing up the hieroglyphics which she called her
accounts; she answered sharply enough, but it was a permission to
enter, and Ruth was thankful for it.
"Will you tell me how he is? Do you think I may go back to him?"
"No, indeed, that you may not. Nest, who has made his room tidy these
many days, is not fit to go in now. Mrs Bellingham has brought her
own maid, and the family nurse, and Mr Bellingham's man; such a tribe
of servants and no end to packages; water-beds coming by the carrier,
and a doctor from London coming down to-morrow, as if feather-beds
and Mr Jones was not good enough. Why, she won't let a soul of us
into the room; there's no chance for you!"
Ruth sighed. "How is he?" she inquired, after a pause.
"How can I tell indeed, when I'm not allowed to go near him? Mr Jones
said to-night was a turning point; but I doubt it, for it is four
days since he was taken ill, and who ever heard of a sick person
taking a turn on an even number of days; it's always on the third, or
the fifth, or seventh, or so on. He'll not turn till to-morrow night,
take my word for it, and their fine London doctor will get all the
credit, and honest Mr Jones will be thrown aside. I don't think he
will get better myself, though—Gelert does not howl for nothing. My
patience! what's the matter with the girl?—lord, child, you're never
going to faint, and be ill on my hands?" Her sharp voice recalled
Ruth from the sick unconsciousness that had been creeping over her
as she listened to the latter part of this speech. She sat down
and could not speak—the room whirled round and round—her white
feebleness touched Mrs Morgan's heart.
"You've had no tea, I guess. Indeed, and the girls are very
careless." She rang the bell with energy, and seconded her pull
by going to the door and shouting out sharp directions, in Welsh,
to Nest and Gwen, and three or four other rough, kind, slatternly
servants.
They brought her tea, which was comfortable, according to the idea of
comfort prevalent in that rude, hospitable place; there was plenty to
eat, too much, indeed, for it revolted the appetite it was intended
to provoke. But the heartiness with which the kind, rosy waiter
pressed her to eat, and the scolding Mrs Morgan gave her when she
found the buttered toast untouched (toast on which she had herself
desired that the butter might not be spared), did Ruth more good than
the tea. She began to hope, and to long for the morning when hope
might have become certainty. It was all in vain that she was told
that the room she had been in all day was at her service; she did not
say a word, but she was not going to bed that night, of all nights in
the year, when life or death hung trembling in the balance. She went
into the bedroom till the bustling house was still, and heard busy
feet passing to and fro in the room she might not enter; and voices,
imperious, though hushed down to a whisper, ask for innumerable
things. Then there was silence; and when she thought that all were
dead asleep, except the watchers, she stole out into the gallery. On
the other side were two windows, cut into the thick stone wall, and
flower pots were placed on the shelves thus formed, where great,
untrimmed, straggling geraniums grew, and strove to reach the light.
The window near Mr Bellingham's door was open; the soft, warm-scented
night air came sighing in in faint gusts, and then was still. It was
summer; there was no black darkness in the twenty-four hours; only
the light grew dusky, and colour disappeared from objects, of which
the shape and form remained distinct. A soft grey oblong of barred
light fell on the flat wall opposite to the windows, and deeper grey
shadows marked out the tracery of the plants, more graceful thus than
in reality. Ruth crouched where no light fell. She sat on the ground
close by the door; her whole existence was absorbed in listening;
all was still; it was only her heart beating with the strong, heavy,
regular sound of a hammer. She wished she could stop its rushing,
incessant clang. She heard a rustle of a silken gown, and knew it
ought not to have been worn in a sick-room; for her senses seemed to
have passed into the keeping of the invalid, and to feel only as he
felt. The noise was probably occasioned by some change of posture in
the watcher inside, for it was once more dead-still. The soft wind
outside sank with a low, long, distant moan among the windings of
the hills, and lost itself there, and came no more again. But Ruth's
heart beat loud. She rose with as little noise as if she were a
vision, and crept to the open window to try and lose the nervous
listening for the ever-recurring sound. Out beyond, under the calm
sky, veiled with a mist rather than with a cloud, rose the high, dark
outlines of the mountains, shutting in that village as if it lay in a
nest. They stood, like giants, solemnly watching for the end of Earth
and Time. Here and there a black round shadow reminded Ruth of some
"Cwm," or hollow, where she and her lover had rambled in sun and
in gladness. She then thought the land enchanted into everlasting
brightness and happiness; she fancied, then, that into a region so
lovely no bale or woe could enter, but would be charmed away and
disappear before the sight of the glorious guardian mountains. Now
she knew the truth, that earth has no barrier which avails against
agony. It comes lightning-like down from heaven, into the mountain
house and the town garret; into the palace and into the cottage. The
garden lay close under the house; a bright spot enough by day; for
in that soil, whatever was planted grew and blossomed in spite of
neglect. The white roses glimmered out in the dusk all the night
through; the red were lost in shadow. Between the low boundary of
the garden and the hills swept one or two green meadows; Ruth looked
into the grey darkness till she traced each separate wave of outline.
Then she heard a little restless bird chirp out its wakefulness from
a nest in the ivy round the walls of the house. But the mother-bird
spread her soft feathers, and hushed it into silence. Presently,
however, many little birds began to scent the coming dawn, and
rustled among the leaves, and chirruped loud and clear. Just above
the horizon, too, the mist became a silvery grey cloud hanging on the
edge of the world; presently it turned shimmering white; and then,
in an instant, it flushed into rose, and the mountain-tops sprang
into heaven, and bathed in the presence of the shadow of God. With
a bound, the sun of a molten fiery red came above the horizon, and
immediately thousands of little birds sang out for joy, and a soft
chorus of mysterious, glad murmurs came forth from the earth; the low
whispering wind left its hiding-place among the clefts and hollows of
the hills, and wandered among the rustling herbs and trees, waking
the flower-buds to the life of another day. Ruth gave a sigh of
relief that the night was over and gone; for she knew that soon
suspense would be ended, and the verdict known, whether for life or
for death. She grew faint and sick with anxiety; it almost seemed
as if she must go into the room and learn the truth. Then she heard
movements, but they were not sharp or rapid, as if prompted by any
emergency; then, again, it was still. She sat curled up upon the
floor, with her head thrown back against the wall, and her hands
clasped round her knees. She had yet to wait. Meanwhile, the invalid
was slowly rousing himself from a long, deep, sound, health-giving
sleep. His mother had sat by him the night through, and was now
daring to change her position for the first time; she was even
venturing to give directions in a low voice to the old nurse, who
had dozed away in an arm-chair, ready to obey any summons of her
mistress. Mrs Bellingham went on tiptoe towards the door, and chiding
herself because her stiff, weary limbs made some slight noise. She
had an irrepressible longing for a few minutes' change of scene after
her night of watching. She felt that the crisis was over; and the
relief to her mind made her conscious of every bodily feeling and
irritation, which had passed unheeded as long as she had been in
suspense.
She slowly opened the door. Ruth sprang upright at the first sound
of the creaking handle. Her very lips were stiff and unpliable with
the force of the blood which rushed to her head. It seemed as if she
could not form words. She stood right before Mrs Bellingham. "How is
he, madam?"
Mrs Bellingham was for a moment surprised at the white apparition
which seemed to rise out of the ground. But her quick, proud mind
understood it all in an instant. This was the girl, then, whose
profligacy had led her son astray; had raised up barriers in the way
of her favourite scheme of his marriage with Miss Duncombe; nay, this
was the real cause of his illness, his mortal danger at this present
time, and of her bitter, keen anxiety. If, under any circumstances,
Mrs Bellingham could have been guilty of the ill-breeding of not
answering a question, it was now; and for a moment she was tempted to
pass on in silence. Ruth could not wait; she spoke again:
"For the love of God, madam, speak! How is he? Will he live?"
If she did not answer her, she thought the creature was desperate
enough to force her way into his room. So she spoke.
"He has slept well: he is better."
"Oh! my God, I thank Thee," murmured Ruth, sinking back against the
wall.
It was too much to hear this wretched girl thanking God for her son's
life; as if, in fact, she had any lot or part in him, and to dare to
speak to the Almighty on her son's behalf! Mrs Bellingham looked at
her with cold, contemptuous eyes, whose glances were like ice-bolts,
and made Ruth shiver up away from them.
"Young woman, if you have any propriety or decency left, I trust that
you will not dare to force yourself into his room."
She stood for a moment as if awaiting an answer, and half expecting
it to be a defiance. But she did not understand Ruth. She did not
imagine the faithful trustfulness of her heart. Ruth believed that
if Mr Bellingham was alive and likely to live, all was well. When he
wanted her, he would send for her, ask for her, yearn for her, till
every one would yield before his steadfast will. At present she
imagined that he was probably too weak to care or know who was about
him; and though it would have been an infinite delight to her to
hover and brood around him, yet it was of him she thought and not
of herself. She gently drew herself on one side to make way for Mrs
Bellingham to pass.