When Death is present in a household on a Christmas Day, the very
contrast between the time as it now is, and the day as it has often
been, gives a poignancy to sorrow,—a more utter blankness to the
desolation. James Leigh died just as the far-away bells of Rochdale
Church were ringing for morning service on Christmas Day, 1836. A few
minutes before his death, he opened his already glazing eyes, and
made a sign to his wife, by the faint motion of his lips, that he had
yet something to say. She stooped close down, and caught the broken
whisper, ‘I forgive her, Anne! May God forgive me.’
‘Oh my love, my dear! only get well, and I will never cease showing my
thanks for those words. May God in heaven bless thee for saying them.
Thou’rt not so restless, my lad! may be—Oh God!’
For even while she spoke, he died.
They had been two-and-twenty years man and wife; for nineteen of those
years their life had been as calm and happy, as the most perfect
uprightness on the one side, and the most complete confidence and
loving submission on the other, could make it. Milton’s famous line
might have been framed and hung up as the rule of their married
life, for he was truly the interpreter, who stood between God and
her; she would have considered herself wicked if she had ever dared
even to think him austere, though as certainly as he was an upright
man, so surely was he hard, stern, and inflexible. But for three
years the moan and the murmur had never been out of her heart; she
had rebelled against her husband as against a tyrant, with a hidden
sullen rebellion, which tore up the old land-marks of wifely duty
and affection, and poisoned the fountains whence gentlest love and
reverence had once been for ever springing.
But those last blessed words replaced him on his throne in her heart,
and called out penitent anguish for all the bitter estrangement of
later years. It was this which made her refuse all the entreaties of
her sons, that she would see the kind-hearted neighbours, who called on
their way from church, to sympathise and condole. No! she would stay
with the dead husband that had spoken tenderly at last, if for three
years he had kept silence; who knew but what, if she had only been more
gentle and less angrily reserved he might have relented earlier—and in
time!
She sat rocking herself to and fro by the side of the bed, while the
footsteps below went in and out; she had been in sorrow too long to
have any violent burst of deep grief now; the furrows were well worn in
her cheeks, and the tears flowed quietly, if incessantly, all the day
long. But when the winter’s night drew on, and the neighbours had gone
away to their homes, she stole to the window, and gazed out, long and
wistfully, over the dark grey moors. She did not hear her son’s voice,
as he spoke to her from the door, nor his footstep as he drew nearer.
She started when he touched her.
‘Mother! come down to us. There’s no one but Will and me. Dearest
mother, we do so want you.’ The poor lad’s voice trembled, and he began
to cry. It appeared to require an effort on Mrs. Leigh’s part to tear
herself away from the window, but with a sigh she complied with his
request.
The two boys (for though Will was nearly twenty-one, she still thought
of him as a lad) had done everything in their power to make the
house-place comfortable for her. She herself, in the old days before
her sorrow, had never made a brighter fire or a cleaner hearth, ready
for her husband’s return home, than now awaited her. The tea-things
were all put out, and the kettle was boiling; and the boys had calmed
their grief down into a kind of sober cheerfulness. They paid her every
attention they could think of, but received little notice on her part;
she did not resist—she rather submitted to all their arrangements; but
they did not seem to touch her heart.
When tea was ended,—it was merely the form of tea that had been gone
through,—Will moved the things away to the dresser. His mother leant
back languidly in her chair.
‘Mother, shall Tom read you a chapter? He’s a better scholar than I.’
‘Aye, lad!’ said she, almost eagerly. ‘That’s it. Read me the Prodigal
Son. Aye, aye, lad. Thank thee.’
Tom found the chapter, and read it in the high-pitched voice which is
customary in village-schools. His mother bent forward, her lips parted,
her eyes dilated; her whole body instinct with eager attention. Will
sat with his head depressed, and hung down. He knew why that chapter
had been chosen; and to him it recalled the family’s disgrace. When the
reading was ended, he still hung down his head in gloomy silence. But
her face was brighter than it had been before for the day. Her eyes
looked dreamy, as if she saw a vision; and by and by she pulled the
bible towards her, and putting her finger underneath each word, began
to read them aloud in a low voice to herself; she read again the words
of bitter sorrow and deep humiliation; but most of all she paused and
brightened over the father’s tender reception of the repentant prodigal.
So passed the Christmas evening in the Upclose Farm.
The snow had fallen heavily over the dark waving moorland, before the
day of the funeral. The black storm-laden dome of heaven lay very still
and close upon the white earth, as they carried the body forth out of
the house which had known his presence so long as its ruling power.
Two and two the mourners followed, making a black procession, in their
winding march over the unbeaten snow, to Milne-Row Church—now lost
in some hollow of the bleak moors, now slowly climbing the heaving
ascents. There was no long tarrying after the funeral, for many of the
neighbours who accompanied the body to the grave had far to go, and the
great white flakes which came slowly down, were the boding fore-runners
of a heavy storm. One old friend alone accompanied the widow and her
sons to their home.
The Upclose Farm had belonged for generations to the Leighs; and yet
its possession hardly raised them above the rank of labourers. There
was the house and out-buildings, all of an old-fashioned kind, and
about seven acres of barren unproductive land, which they had never
possessed capital enough to improve; indeed they could hardly rely upon
it for subsistence; and it had been customary to bring up the sons to
some trade—such as a wheelwright’s, or blacksmith’s.
James Leigh had left a will, in the possession of the old man who
accompanied them home. He read it aloud. James had bequeathed the farm
to his faithful wife, Anne Leigh, for her life-time; and afterwards, to
his son William. The hundred and odd pounds in the savings’-bank was to
accumulate for Thomas.
After the reading was ended, Anne Leigh sat silent for a time; and
then she asked to speak to Samuel Orme alone. The sons went into the
back-kitchen, and thence strolled out into the fields regardless of the
driving snow. The brothers were dearly fond of each other, although
they were very different in character. Will, the elder, was like his
father, stern, reserved, and scrupulously upright. Tom (who was ten
years younger) was gentle and delicate as a girl, both in appearance
and character. He had always clung to his mother, and dreaded his
father. They did not speak as they walked, for they were only in the
habit of talking about facts, and hardly knew the more sophisticated
language applied to the description of feelings.
Meanwhile their mother had taken hold of Samuel Orme’s arm with her
trembling hand.
‘Samuel, I must let the farm—I must.’
‘Let the farm! What’s come o’er the woman?’
‘Oh, Samuel!’ said she, her eyes swimming in tears, ‘I’m just fain to
go and live in Manchester. I mun let the farm.’
Samuel looked, and pondered, but did not speak for some time. At last
he said—
‘If thou hast made up thy mind, there’s no speaking again it; and thou
must e’en go. Thou’lt be sadly pottered wi’ Manchester ways; but that’s
not my look out. Why, thou’lt have to buy potatoes, a thing thou hast
never done afore in all thy born life. Well! it’s not my look out. It’s
rather for me than again me. Our Jenny is going to be married to Tom
Higginbotham, and he was speaking of wanting a bit of land to begin
upon. His father will be dying sometime, I reckon, and then he’ll step
into the Croft Farm. But meanwhile’—
‘Then, thou’lt let the farm,’ said she, still as eagerly as ever.
‘Aye, aye, he’ll take it fast enough, I’ve a notion. But I’ll not drive
a bargain with thee just now; it would not be right; we’ll wait a bit.’
‘No; I cannot wait, settle it out at once.’
‘Well, well; I’ll speak to Will about it. I see him out yonder. I’ll
step to him, and talk it over.’
Accordingly he went and joined the two lads, and without more ado,
began the subject to them.
‘Will, thy mother is fain to go live in Manchester, and covets to let
the farm. Now, I’m willing to take it for Tom Higginbotham; but I like
to drive a keen bargain, and there would be no fun chaffering with thy
mother just now. Let thee and me buckle to, my lad! and try and cheat
each other; it will warm us this cold day.’
‘Let the farm!’ said both the lads at once, with infinite surprise,
‘Go live in Manchester!’
When Samuel Orme found that the plan had never before been named to
either Will or Tom, he would have nothing to do with it, he said,
until they had spoken to their mother; likely she was ‘dazed’ by her
husband’s death; he would wait a day or two, and not name it to any
one; not to Tom Higginbotham himself, or may be he would set his heart
upon it. The lads had better go in and talk it over with their mother.
He bade them good day, and left them.
Will looked very gloomy, but he did not speak till they got near the
house. Then he said,—
‘Tom, go to th’ shippon, and supper the cows. I want to speak to mother
alone.’
When he entered the house-place, she was sitting before the fire,
looking into its embers. She did not hear him come in; for some time
she had lost her quick perception of outward things.
‘Mother! what’s this about going to Manchester?’ asked he.
‘Oh, lad!’ said she, turning round, and speaking in a beseeching tone,
‘I must go and seek our Lizzie. I cannot rest here for thinking on her.
Many’s the time I’ve left thy father sleeping in bed, and stole to th’
window, and looked and looked my heart out towards Manchester, till I
thought I must just set out and tramp over moor and moss straight away
till I got there, and then lift up every downcast face till I came to
our Lizzie. And often, when the south wind was blowing soft among the
hollows, I’ve fancied (it could but be fancy, thou knowest) I heard her
crying upon me; and I’ve thought the voice came closer and closer, till
at last it was sobbing out “Mother” close to the door; and I’ve stolen
down, and undone the latch before now, and looked out into the still
black night, thinking to see her,—and turned sick and sorrowful when I
heard no living sound but the sough of the wind dying away. Oh! speak
not to me of stopping here, when she may be perishing for hunger, like
the poor lad in the parable.’ And now she lifted up her voice and wept
aloud.
Will was deeply grieved. He had been old enough to be told the family
shame when, more than two years before, his father had had his letter
to his daughter returned by her mistress in Manchester, telling him
that Lizzie had left her service some time—and why. He had sympathised
with his father’s stern anger; though he had thought him something
hard, it is true, when he had forbidden his weeping, heart-broken
wife to go and try to find her poor sinning child, and declared that
henceforth they would have no daughter; that she should be as one
dead, and her name never more be named at market or at meal time, in
blessing or in prayer. He had held his peace, with compressed lips
and contracted brow, when the neighbours had noticed to him how poor
Lizzie’s death had aged both his father and his mother; and how they
thought the bereaved couple would never hold up their heads again. He
himself had felt as if that one event had made him old before his time;
and had envied Tom the tears he had shed over poor, pretty, innocent,
dead Lizzie. He thought about her sometimes, till he ground his teeth
together, and could have struck her down in her shame. His mother had
never named her to him until now.
‘Mother!’ said he at last. ‘She may be dead. Most likely she is.’
‘No, Will; she is not dead,’ said Mrs. Leigh. ‘God will not let her
die till I’ve seen her once again. Thou dost not know how I’ve prayed
and prayed just once again to see her sweet face, and tell her I’ve
forgiven her, though she’s broken my heart—she has, Will.’ She could
not go on for a minute or two for the choking sobs. ‘Thou dost not
know that, or thou wouldst not say she could be dead,—for God is very
merciful, Will; He is,—He is much more pitiful than man,—I could never
ha’ spoken to thy father as I did to Him,—and yet thy father forgave
her at last. The last words he said were that he forgave her. Thou’lt
not be harder than thy father, Will? Do not try and hinder me going to
seek her, for it’s no use.’
Will sat very still for a long time before he spoke. At last he said,
‘I’ll not hinder you. I think she’s dead, but that’s no matter.’
‘She is not dead,’ said her mother, with low earnestness. Will took no
notice of the interruption.
‘We will all go to Manchester for a twelvemonth, and let the farm to
Tom Higginbotham. I’ll get blacksmith’s work; and Tom can have good
schooling for awhile, which he’s always craving for. At the end of the
year you’ll come back, mother, and give over fretting for Lizzie, and
think with me that she is dead,—and, to my mind, that would be more
comfort than to think of her living;’ he dropped his voice as he spoke
these last words. She shook her head, but made no answer. He asked
again,—
‘Will you, mother, agree to this?’
‘I’ll agree to it a-this-ns,’ said she. ‘If I hear and see nought of
her for a twelvemonth, me being in Manchester looking out, I’ll just
ha’ broken my heart fairly before the year’s ended, and then I shall
know neither love nor sorrow for her any more, when I’m at rest in the
grave—I’ll agree to that, Will.’
‘Well, I suppose it must be so. I shall not tell Tom, mother, why we’re
flitting to Manchester. Best spare him.’
‘As thou wilt,’ said she, sadly, ‘so that we go, that’s all.’
Before the wild daffodils were in flower in the sheltered copses round
Upclose Farm, the Leighs were settled in their Manchester home; if
they could ever grow to consider that place as a home, where there was
no garden, or outbuilding, no fresh breezy outlet, no far-stretching
view, over moor and hollow,—no dumb animals to be tended, and, what
more than all they missed, no old haunting memories, even though those
remembrances told of sorrow, and the dead and gone.
Mrs. Leigh heeded the loss of all these things less than her sons. She
had more spirit in her countenance than she had had for months, because
now she had hope; of a sad enough kind, to be sure, but still it was
hope. She performed all her household duties, strange and complicated
as they were, and bewildered as she was with all the town-necessities
of her new manner of life; but when her house was ‘sided,’ and the
boys come home from their work, in the evening, she would put on her
things and steal out, unnoticed, as she thought, but not without
many a heavy sigh from Will, after she had closed the house-door and
departed. It was often past midnight before she came back, pale and
weary, with almost a guilty look upon her face; but that face so full
of disappointment and hope deferred, that Will had never the heart
to say what he thought of the folly and hopelessness of the search.
Night after night it was renewed, till days grew to weeks and weeks
to months. All this time Will did his duty towards her as well as
he could, without having sympathy with her. He staid at home in the
evenings for Tom’s sake, and often wished he had Tom’s pleasure in
reading, for the time hung heavy on his hands, as he sat up for his
mother.
I need not tell you how the mother spent the weary hours. And yet I
will tell you something. She used to wander out, at first as if without
a purpose, till she rallied her thoughts, and brought all her energies
to bear on the one point; then she went with earnest patience along
the least known ways to some new part of the town, looking wistfully
with dumb entreaty into people’s faces; sometimes catching a glimpse
of a figure which had a kind of momentary likeness to her child’s,
and following that figure with never wearying perseverance, till some
light from shop or lamp showed the cold strange face which was not
her daughter’s. Once or twice a kind-hearted passer-by, struck by her
look of yearning woe, turned back and offered help, or asked her what
she wanted. When so spoken to, she answered only, ‘You don’t know a
poor girl they call Lizzie Leigh, do you?’ and when they denied all
knowledge, she shook her head, and went on again. I think they believed
her to be crazy. But she never spoke first to any one. She sometimes
took a few minutes’ rest on the door-steps, and sometimes (very seldom)
covered her face and cried; but she could not afford to lose time and
chances in this way; while her eyes were blinded with tears, the lost
one might pass by unseen.
One evening, in the rich time of shortening autumn-days, Will saw an
old man, who, without being absolutely drunk, could not guide himself
rightly along the foot-path, and was mocked for his unsteadiness of
gait by the idle boys of the neighbourhood. For his father’s sake Will
regarded old age with tenderness, even when most degraded and removed
from the stern virtues which dignified that father; so he took the old
man home, and seemed to believe his often-repeated assertions that he
drank nothing but water. The stranger tried to stiffen himself up into
steadiness as he drew nearer home, as if there were some one there, for
whose respect he cared even in his half-intoxicated state, or whose
feelings he feared to grieve. His home was exquisitely clean and neat
even in outside appearance; threshold, window, and window-sill, were
outward signs of some spirit of purity within. Will was rewarded for
his attention by a bright glance of thanks, succeeded by a blush of
shame, from a young woman of twenty or thereabouts. She did not speak,
or second her father’s hospitable invitations to him to be seated. She
seemed unwilling that a stranger should witness her father’s attempts
at stately sobriety, and Will could not bear to stay and see her
distress. But when the old man, with many a flabby shake of the hand,
kept asking him to come again some other evening and see them, Will
sought her downcast eyes, and, though he could not read their veiled
meaning, he answered timidly, ‘If it’s agreeable to everybody, I’ll
come—and thank ye.’ But there was no answer from the girl to whom this
speech was in reality addressed; and Will left the house liking her all
the better for never speaking.
He thought about her a great deal for the next day or two; he scolded
himself for being so foolish as to think of her, and then fell to
with fresh vigour, and thought of her more than ever. He tried to
depreciate her; he told himself she was not pretty, and then made
indignant answer that he liked her looks much better than any beauty
of them all. He wished he was not so country looking, so red-faced, so
broad-shouldered; while she was like a lady, with her smooth colourless
complexion, her bright dark hair and her spotless dress. Pretty, or
not pretty, she drew his footsteps towards her; he could not resist
the impulse that made him wish to see her once more, and find out some
fault which should unloose his heart from her unconscious keeping.
But there she was, pure and maidenly as before. He sat and looked,
answering her father at cross-purposes, while she drew more and more
into the shadow of the chimney-corner out of sight. Then the spirit
that possessed him (it was not he himself, sure, that did so impudent
a thing!) made him get up and carry the candle to a different place,
under the pretence of giving her more light at her sewing, but, in
reality, to be able to see her better; she could not stand this much
longer, but jumped up, and said she must put her little niece to bed;
and surely, there never was, before or since, so troublesome a child
of two years old; for, though Will staid an hour and a half longer,
she never came down again. He won the father’s heart, though, by his
capacity as a listener, for some people are not at all particular,
and, so that they themselves may talk on undisturbed, are not so
unreasonable as to expect attention to what they say.
Will did gather this much, however, from the old man’s talk. He had
once been quite in a genteel line of business, but had failed for more
money than any greengrocer he had heard of; at least, any who did not
mix up fish and game with greengrocery proper. This grand failure
seemed to have been the event of his life, and one on which he dwelt
with a strange kind of pride. It appeared as if at present he rested
from his past exertions (in the bankrupt line), and depended on his
daughter, who kept a small school for very young children. But all
these particulars Will only remembered and understood, when he had left
the house; at the time he heard them, he was thinking of Susan. After
he had made good his footing at Mr. Palmer’s, he was not long, you may
be sure, without finding some reason for returning again and again. He
listened to her father, he talked to the little niece, but he looked at
Susan, both while he listened and while he talked. Her father kept on
insisting upon his former gentility, the details of which would have
appeared very questionable to Will’s mind, if the sweet, delicate,
modest Susan had not thrown an inexplicable air of refinement over all
she came near. She never spoke much; she was generally diligently at
work; but when she moved it was so noiselessly, and when she did speak,
it was in so low and soft a voice, that silence, speech, motion and
stillness, alike seemed to remove her high above Will’s reach into some
saintly and inaccessible air of glory—high above his reach, even as she
knew him! And, if she were made acquainted with the dark secret behind,
of his sister’s shame, which was kept ever present to his mind by his
mother’s nightly search among the outcast and forsaken, would not
Susan shrink away from him with loathing, as if he were tainted by the
involuntary relationship? This was his dread; and thereupon followed a
resolution that he would withdraw from her sweet company before it was
too late. So he resisted internal temptation, and staid at home, and
suffered and sighed. He became angry with his mother for her untiring
patience in seeking for one who, he could not help hoping, was dead
rather than alive. He spoke sharply to her, and received only such
sad deprecatory answers as made him reproach himself, and still more
lose sight of peace of mind. This struggle could not last long without
affecting his health; and Tom, his sole companion through the long
evenings, noticed his increasing languor, his restless irritability,
with perplexed anxiety, and at last resolved to call his mother’s
attention to his brother’s haggard, care-worn looks. She listened with
a startled recollection of Will’s claims upon her love. She noticed his
decreasing appetite, and half-checked sighs.
‘Will, lad! what’s come o’er thee?’ said she to him, as he sat
listlessly gazing into the fire.
‘There’s nought the matter with me,’ said he, as if annoyed at her
remark.
‘Nay, lad, but there is.’ He did not speak again to contradict her;
indeed she did not know if he had heard her, so unmoved did he look.
‘Would’st like to go back to Upclose Farm?’ asked she, sorrowfully.
‘It’s just blackberrying time,’ said Tom.
Will shook his head. She looked at him awhile, as if trying to read
that expression of despondency and trace it back to its source.
‘Will and Tom could go,’ said she; ‘I must stay here till I’ve found
her, thou know’st,’ continued she, dropping her voice.
He turned quickly round, and with the authority he at all times
exercised over Tom, bade him begone to bed.
When Tom had left the room he prepared to speak.