THE NEIGHBOURS
He had eaten nothing since the morning, and felt like one in a calm
ethereal dream as he walked home to Weelset in the soft dusk of an
evening that would never be night, but die into the day. No one saw him
enter the house, no one met him on the ancient spiral stair, as, with
apprehensive anticipation, he sought the drawing-room.
He had just set his foot on the little landing by its door when a wild
scream came from the room. He flung the door open and darted in. His
mother rushed into his arms, enveloped from foot to head in a cone of
fire. She was making, in wild flight, for the stair, to reach which
would have been death to her. Francis held her fast, but she struggled
so wildly that he had actually to throw her on the floor ere he could
do anything to deliver her. Then he flung on her the rug, the
table-cover, his coat, and one of the window-curtains, tearing it
fiercely from the rings. Having got all these close around her, he rang
the bell with an alarum-peal, but had to ring three times, for service
in that house was deadened by frequent fury of summons. Two of the
maids--there was no manservant in the house now--laid their mistress on
a mattress, and carried her to her room. Gordon’s hands and arms were
so severely burned that he could do nothing beyond directing: he thought
he had never felt pain before.
The doctor was sent for, and came speedily. Having examined them, he
said Mrs. Gordon’s injuries would have caused him no anxiety but for
her habits: their consequences might be very serious, and every
possible care must be taken of her.
Disabled as he was, Francis sat by her till the morning; and the
night’s nursing did far more for himself than for his mother. For, as
he saw how she suffered, and interpreted her moans by what he had felt
and was still feeling in his own hands and arms, a great pity awoke in
him. What a lost life his mother’s had been! Was this to be the end of
it? The old kindness she had shown him in his childhood and youth,
especially when he was in any bodily trouble, came back upon him, and a
new love, gathering up in it all the intermittent love of days long
gone by, sprang to life in his heart, and he saw that the one thing
given him to do was to deliver his mother.
The task seemed, if not easy, yet far from irksome, so long as she
continued incapable of resisting, annoying, or deceiving him; but the
time speedily came when he perceived that the continuous battle rather
than war of duty and inclination must be fought and in some measure won
in himself ere he could hope to stir up any smallest skirmish of sacred
warfare in the soul of his mother. What added to the acerbities of this
preliminary war was, that the very nature of the contest required
actions which showed not only unbecoming in a son, but mean and
disgraceful in themselves. There was no pride, pomp, or circumstance of
glorious war in this poor, domestic strife, this seemingly sordid and
unheroic, miserably unheroic, yet high, eternal contest! But now that
Francis was awake to his duty, the best of his nature awoke to meet its
calls, and he drew upon a growing store of love for strength to thwart
the desires of her he loved. ‘Entire affection hateth nicer hands,’ and
Francis learned not to mind looking penurious and tyrannical, selfish,
heartless, and unsympathetic, in the endeavour to be truly loving and
lovingly true. He had not Kirsty to support him, but he could now go
higher than to Kirsty for the help he needed; he went to the same
fountain from which Kirsty herself drew her strength. At the same time
frequent thought of her filled him with glad assurance of her sympathy,
which was in itself a wondrous aid. He neither saw nor sought to see
her: he would not go near her before at least she already knew from
other sources what would give her the hope that he was trying to do
right.
The gradually approaching strife between mother and son burst out the
same moment in which the devilish thirst awoke to its cruel tyranny. It
was a mercy to both of them that it re-asserted itself while yet the
mother was helpless toward any indulgence of her passion. Francis was
no longer afraid of her, but it was the easier because of her
condition, although not the less painful for him to frustrate her
desire. Neither did it make it the less painful that already her
countenance, which the outward fire had not half so much disfigured as
that which she herself had applied inwardly, had begun to remind him of
the face he had long ago loved a little, but this only made him, if
possible, yet more determined that not one shilling of his father’s
money should go to the degradation of his mother. That she lusted and
desired to have, was the worst of reasons why she should obtain! A
compelled temperance was of course in itself worthless, but that alone
could give opportunity for the waking of what soul was left her. Puny
as it was, that might then begin to grow; it might become aware of the
bondage to which it had been subjected, and begin to long for liberty.
In carrying out his resolution, Francis found it specially hard to
fight, along with the bad in his mother, the good in himself: the lower
forms of love rose against the higher, and had to be put down. To see
the scintillation of his mother’s eyes at the sound of any liquid, and
know how easily he could give her an hour of false happiness, tore his
heart, while her fierce abuse hardly passed the portals of his brain.
Her condition was so pitiful that her words could not make him angry.
She would declare it was he who set her clothes on fire, and as soon as
she was up again she would publish to the world what a coward and sneak
he showed himself from morning to night. Had Francis been what he once
was, his mother and he must soon have come as near absolute hatred as
is possible to the human; but he was now so different that the worst
answer he ever gave her was,
‘Mother, you _know_ you don’t mean it!’
‘I mean it with all my heart and soul, Francis,’ she replied, glaring
at him.
He stooped to kiss her on the forehead, she struck him on the face so
that the blood sprang. He went back a step, and stood looking at her
sadly as he wiped it away.
‘Crying!’ she said. ‘You always were a coward, Francis!’
But the word had no more any sting for him.
‘I’m all right, mother. My nose got in the way!’ he answered, restoring
his handkerchief to his pocket.
‘It’s the doctor puts him up to it!’ said Mrs. Gordon to herself. ‘But
we shall soon be rid of him now! If there’s any more of this nonsense
then, I shall have to shut Francis up again! That will teach him how to
behave to his mother!’
When at length Mrs. Gordon was able to go about the house again, it was
at once to discover that things were not to be as they had been. Then
deepened the combat, and at the same time assumed aspects and
occasioned situations which in the eye of the world would have seemed
even ludicrously unbecoming. The battle of the warrior is with confused
noise and garments rolled in blood, but how much harder and worthier
battles are fought, not in shining armour, but amid filth and squalor
physical as well as moral, on a field of wretched and wearisome
commonplace!
It was essential to success that there should be no traitor among the
servants, and Francis had made them understand what his measures were.
Nor was there in this any betrayal of a mother’s weakness, for Mrs.
Gordon’s had long been more than patent to all about her. When,
therefore, he one day found her, for the first time, under the
influence of strong drink, he summoned them and told them that, sooner
than fail of his end, he would part with the whole household, and
should be driven to it if no one revealed how the thing had come to
pass. Thereupon the youngest, a mere girl, burst into tears, and
confessed that she had procured the whisky. Hardly thinking it possible
his mother should have money in her possession, so careful was he to
prevent it, he questioned, and found that she had herself provided the
half-crown required, and that her mistress had given her in return a
valuable brooch, an heirloom, which was hers only to wear, not to give.
He took this from her, repaid her the half-crown, gave her her wages up
to the next term, and sent Mrs. Bremner home with her immediately. Her
father being one of his own tenants, he rode to his place the next
morning, laid before him the whole matter, and advised him to keep the
girl at home for a year or two.
This one evil success gave such a stimulus to Mrs. Gordon’s passion
that her rage with her keeper, which had been abating a little, blazed
up at once as fierce as at first. But, miserable as the whole thing
was, and trying as he found the necessary watchfulness, Gordon held out
bravely. At the end of six months, however, during which no fresh
indulgence had been possible to her, he had not gained the least ground
for hoping that any poorest growth of strength, or even any waking of
desire toward betterment, had taken place in her.
All this time he had not been once to Corbyknowe. He had nevertheless
been seeing David Barclay three or four times a week. For Francis had
told David how he stood with Kirsty, and how, while refusing him, she
had shown him his duty to his mother. He told him also that he now saw
things with other eyes, and was endeavouring to do what was right; but
he dared not speak to her on the subject lest she should think, as she
would, after what had passed between them, be well justified in
thinking, that he was doing for her sake what ought to be done for its
own. He said to him that, as he was no man of business, and must give
his best attention to his mother, he found it impossible for the
present to acquaint himself with the state of the property, or indeed
attend to it in any serviceable manner; and he begged him, as his
father’s friend and his own, to look into his affairs, and, so far as
his other duties would permit, place things on at least a better
footing.
To this petition, David had at once and gladly consented.
He found everything connected with the property in a sad condition. The
agent, although honest, was weak, and had so given way to Mrs. Gordon
that much havoc had been made, and much money wasted. He was now in bad
health, and had lost all heart for his work. But he had turned nothing
to his own advantage, and was quite ready, under David’s supervision,
to do his best for the restoration of order, and the curtailment of
expenses.
All that David now saw in his intercourse with the young laird, went to
convince him that he was at length a man of conscience, cherishing
steady purposes. He reported at home what he saw, and said what he
believed, and his wife and daughter perceived plainly that his heart
was lighter than it had been for many a day. Kirsty listened, said
little, asked a question here and there, and thanked God. For her
father brought her not only the good news that Francis was doing his
best for his mother, but that he had begun to open his eyes to the fact
that he had his part in the wellbeing of all on his land; that the
property was not his for the filling of his pockets, or for the
carrying out of schemes of his own, but for the general and individual
comfort and progress.
‘I do believe,’ said David, ‘the young laird wud fain mak o’ the lan’s
o’ Weelset a spot whauron the e’en o’ the bonny man micht rist as he
gaed by!’
Mrs. Gordon’s temper seemed for a time to have changed from fierce to
sullen, but by degrees she began to show herself not altogether
indifferent to the continuous attentions of her inexorable son. It is
true she received them as her right, but he yielded her a right
immeasurably beyond that she would have claimed. He would play draughts
or cribbage with her for hours at a time, and every day for months read
to her as long as she would listen--read Scott and Dickens and Wilkie
Collins and Charles Reade.
One day, after much entreaty, she consented to go out for a drive with
him, when round to the door came a beautiful new carriage, and such a
pair of horses as she could not help expressing satisfaction with.
Francis told her they were at her command, but if ever she took unfair
advantage of them, he would send both carriage and horses away.
She was furious at his daring to speak so to _her_, and had almost
returned to her room, but thought better of it and went with him. She
did not, however, speak a word to him the whole way. The next morning
he let her go alone. After that, he sometimes went with her, and
sometimes not: the desire of his heart was to behold her a free woman.
She was quite steady for a while, and her spirits began to return. The
hopes of her son rose high; he almost ceased to fear.