Mrs Bellingham "Does the Thing Handsomely"
If Mr Bellingham did not get rapidly well, it was more owing to
the morbid querulous fancy attendant on great weakness than from
any unfavourable medical symptom. But he turned away with peevish
loathing from the very sight of food, prepared in the slovenly manner
which had almost disgusted him when he was well. It was of no use
telling him that Simpson, his mother's maid, had superintended the
preparation at every point. He offended her by detecting something
offensive and to be avoided in her daintiest messes, and made Mrs
Morgan mutter many a hasty speech, which, however, Mrs Bellingham
thought it better not to hear until her son should be strong enough
to travel.
"I think you are better to-day," said she, as his man wheeled his
sofa to the bedroom window. "We shall get you downstairs to-morrow."
"If it were to get away from this abominable place, I could go down
to-day; but I believe I'm to be kept prisoner here for ever. I shall
never get well here, I'm sure."
He sank back on his sofa in impatient despair. The surgeon was
announced, and eagerly questioned by Mrs Bellingham as to the
possibility of her son's removal; and he, having heard the same
anxiety for the same end expressed by Mrs Morgan in the regions
below, threw no great obstacles in the way. After the doctor had
taken his departure, Mrs Bellingham cleared her throat several times.
Mr Bellingham knew the prelude of old, and winced with nervous
annoyance.
"Henry, there is something I must speak to you about; an unpleasant
subject, certainly, but one which has been forced upon me by the very
girl herself; you must be aware to what I refer without giving me the
pain of explaining myself."
Mr Bellingham turned himself sharply round to the wall, and prepared
himself for a lecture by concealing his face from her notice; but she
herself was in too nervous a state to be capable of observation.
"Of course," she continued, "it was my wish to be as blind to the
whole affair as possible, though you can't imagine how Mrs Mason has
blazoned it abroad; all Fordham rings with it; but of course it could
not be pleasant, or, indeed, I may say correct, for me to be aware
that a person of such improper character was under the same--I beg
your pardon, dear Henry, what do you say?"
"Ruth is no improper character, mother; you do her injustice!"
"My dear boy, you don't mean to uphold her as a paragon of virtue!"
"No, mother, but I led her wrong; I--"
"We will let all discussions into the cause or duration of her
present character drop, if you please," said Mrs Bellingham, with
the sort of dignified authority which retained a certain power over
her son--a power which originated in childhood, and which he only
defied when he was roused into passion. He was too weak in body to
oppose himself to her, and fight the ground inch by inch. "As I have
implied, I do not wish to ascertain your share of blame; from what
I saw of her one morning, I am convinced of her forward, intrusive
manners, utterly without shame, or even common modesty."
"What are you referring to?" asked Mr Bellingham, sharply.
"Why, when you were at the worst, and I had been watching you all
night, and had just gone out in the morning for a breath of fresh
air, this girl pushed herself before me, and insisted upon speaking
to me. I really had to send Mrs Morgan to her before I could return
to your room. A more impudent, hardened manner, I never saw."
"Ruth was neither impudent nor hardened; she was ignorant enough, and
might offend from knowing no better."
He was getting weary of the discussion, and wished it had never
been begun. From the time he had become conscious of his mother's
presence, he had felt the dilemma he was in in regard to Ruth, and
various plans had directly crossed his brain; but it had been so
troublesome to weigh and consider them all properly, that they
had been put aside to be settled when he grew stronger. But this
difficulty in which he was placed by his connexion with Ruth,
associated the idea of her in his mind with annoyance and angry
regret at the whole affair. He wished, in the languid way in which
he wished and felt everything not immediately relating to his daily
comfort, that he had never seen her. It was a most awkward, a most
unfortunate affair. Notwithstanding this annoyance connected with
and arising out of Ruth, he would not submit to hear her abused;
and something in his manner impressed this on his mother, for she
immediately changed her mode of attack.
"We may as well drop all dispute as to the young woman's manners;
but I suppose you do not mean to defend your connexion with her; I
suppose you are not so lost to all sense of propriety as to imagine
it fit or desirable that your mother and this degraded girl should
remain under the same roof, liable to meet at any hour of the day?"
She waited for an answer, but no answer came.
"I ask you a simple question; is it, or is it not desirable?"
"I suppose it is not," he replied, gloomily.
"And _I_ suppose, from your manner, that you think the difficulty
would be best solved by my taking my departure, and leaving you with
your vicious companion?"
Again no answer, but inward and increasing annoyance, of which Mr
Bellingham considered Ruth the cause. At length he spoke.
"Mother, you are not helping me in my difficulty. I have no desire
to banish you, nor to hurt you, after all your care for me. Ruth has
not been so much to blame as you imagine, that I must say; but I
do not wish to see her again, if you can tell me how to arrange it
otherwise, without behaving unhandsomely. Only spare me all this
worry while I am so weak. I put myself in your hands. Dismiss her, as
you wish it; but let it be done handsomely, and let me hear no more
about it; I cannot bear it; let me have a quiet life, without being
lectured while I am pent up here, and unable to shake off unpleasant
thoughts."
"My dear Henry, rely upon me."
"No more, mother; it's a bad business, and I can hardly avoid blaming
myself in the matter; I don't want to dwell upon it."
"Don't be too severe in your self-reproaches while you are so feeble,
dear Henry; it is right to repent, but I have no doubt in my own mind
she led you wrong with her artifices. But, as you say, everything
should be done handsomely. I confess I was deeply grieved when I
first heard of the affair, but since I have seen the girl-- Well!
I'll say no more about her, since I see it displeases you; but I am
thankful to God that you see the error of your ways."
She sat silent, thinking for a little while, and then sent for her
writing-case, and began to write. Her son became restless, and
nervously irritated.
"Mother," he said, "this affair worries me to death. I cannot shake
off the thoughts of it."
"Leave it to me, I'll arrange it satisfactorily."
"Could we not leave to-night? I should not be so haunted by this
annoyance in another place. I dread seeing her again, because I fear
a scene; and yet I believe I ought to see her, in order to explain."
"You must not think of such a thing, Henry," said she, alarmed at
the very idea. "Sooner than that, we will leave in half an hour, and
try to get to Pen trê Voelas to-night. It is not yet three, and the
evenings are very long. Simpson should stay and finish the packing;
she could go straight to London and meet us there. Macdonald and
nurse could go with us. Could you bear twenty miles, do you think?"
Anything to get rid of his uneasiness. He felt that he was not
behaving as he should do, to Ruth, though the really right never
entered his head. But it would extricate him from his present
dilemma, and save him many lectures; he knew that his mother, always
liberal where money was concerned, would "do the thing handsomely,"
and it would always be easy to write and give Ruth what explanation
he felt inclined, in a day or two; so he consented, and soon lost
some of his uneasiness in watching the bustle of the preparation for
their departure.
All this time Ruth was quietly spending in her room, beguiling the
waiting, weary hours, with pictures of the meeting at the end.
Her room looked to the back, and was in a side-wing away from the
principal state apartments, consequently she was not roused to
suspicion by any of the commotion; but, indeed, if she had heard
the banging of doors, the sharp directions, the carriage-wheels,
she would still not have suspected the truth; her own love was too
faithful.
It was four o'clock and past, when some one knocked at her door,
and, on entering, gave her a note, which Mrs Bellingham had left.
That lady had found some difficulty in wording it, so as to satisfy
herself, but it was as follows:
My son, on recovering from his illness, is, I thank God,
happily conscious of the sinful way in which he has been
living with you. By his earnest desire, and in order to
avoid seeing you again, we are on the point of leaving
this place; but before I go, I wish to exhort you to
repentance, and to remind you that you will not have your
own guilt alone upon your head, but that of any young man
whom you may succeed in entrapping into vice. I shall
pray that you may turn to an honest life, and I strongly
recommend you, if indeed you are not 'dead in trespasses
and sins,' to enter some penitentiary. In accordance
with my son's wishes, I forward you in this envelope a
bank-note of fifty pounds.
MARGARET BELLINGHAM.
Was this the end of all? Had he, indeed, gone? She started up, and
asked this last question of the servant, who, half guessing at the
purport of the note, had lingered about the room, curious to see the
effect produced.
"Iss, indeed, miss; the carriage drove from the door as I came
upstairs. You'll see it now on the Yspytty road, if you'll please to
come to the window of No. 24."
Ruth started up, and followed the chambermaid. Aye, there it was,
slowly winding up the steep white road, on which it seemed to move at
a snail's pace.
She might overtake him--she might--she might speak one farewell word
to him, print his face on her heart with a last look--nay, when
he saw her he might retract, and not utterly, for ever, leave her.
Thus she thought; and she flew back to her room, and snatching up
her bonnet, ran, tying the strings with her trembling hands as she
went down the stairs, out at the nearest door, little heeding the
angry words of Mrs Morgan; for the hostess, more irritated at Mrs
Bellingham's severe upbraiding at parting, than mollified by her
ample payment, was offended by the circumstance of Ruth, in her wild
haste, passing through the prohibited front door.
But Ruth was away before Mrs Morgan had finished her speech, out
and away, scudding along the road, thought-lost in the breathless
rapidity of her motion. Though her heart and head beat almost to
bursting, what did it signify if she could but overtake the carriage?
It was a nightmare, constantly evading the most passionate wishes and
endeavours, and constantly gaining ground. Every time it was visible
it was in fact more distant, but Ruth would not believe it. If she
could but gain the summit of that weary, everlasting hill, she
believed that she could run again, and would soon be nigh upon the
carriage. As she ran, she prayed with wild eagerness; she prayed that
she might see his face once more, even if she died on the spot before
him. It was one of those prayers which God is too merciful to grant;
but despairing and wild as it was, Ruth put her soul into it, and
prayed it again, and yet again.
Wave above wave of the ever-rising hills were gained, were crossed,
and at last Ruth struggled up to the very top and stood on the bare
table of moor, brown and purple, stretching far away till it was lost
in the haze of the summer afternoon; and the white road was all flat
before her, but the carriage she sought and the figure she sought had
disappeared. There was no human being there; a few wild, black-faced
mountain sheep quietly grazing near the road, as if it were long
since they had been disturbed by the passing of any vehicle, was all
the life she saw on the bleak moorland.
She threw herself down on the ling by the side of the road in
despair. Her only hope was to die, and she believed she was dying.
She could not think; she could believe anything. Surely life was a
horrible dream, and God would mercifully awaken her from it. She had
no penitence, no consciousness of error or offence; no knowledge
of any one circumstance but that he was gone. Yet afterwards, long
afterwards, she remembered the exact motion of a bright green beetle
busily meandering among the wild thyme near her, and she recalled the
musical, balanced, wavering drop of a skylark into her nest near the
heather-bed where she lay. The sun was sinking low, the hot air had
ceased to quiver near the hotter earth, when she bethought her once
more of the note which she had impatiently thrown down before half
mastering its contents. "Oh, perhaps," she thought, "I have been too
hasty. There may be some words of explanation from him on the other
side of the page, to which, in my blind anguish, I never turned. I
will go and find it."
She lifted herself heavily and stiffly from the crushed heather.
She stood dizzy and confused with her change of posture; and was so
unable to move at first, that her walk was but slow and tottering;
but, by-and-by, she was tasked and goaded by thoughts which forced
her into rapid motion, as if, by it, she could escape from her agony.
She came down on the level ground, just as many gay or peaceful
groups were sauntering leisurely home with hearts at ease; with low
laughs and quiet smiles, and many an exclamation at the beauty of the
summer evening.
Ever since her adventure with the little boy and his sister, Ruth had
habitually avoided encountering these happy--innocents, may I call
them?--these happy fellow-mortals! And even now, the habit grounded
on sorrowful humiliation had power over her; she paused, and then,
on looking back, she saw more people who had come into the main road
from a side path. She opened a gate into a pasture-field, and crept
up to the hedge-bank until all should have passed by, and she could
steal into the inn unseen. She sat down on the sloping turf by the
roots of an old hawthorn-tree which grew in the hedge; she was still
tearless with hot burning eyes; she heard the merry walkers pass by;
she heard the footsteps of the village children as they ran along to
their evening play; she saw the small black cows come into the fields
after being milked; and life seemed yet abroad. When would the world
be still and dark, and fit for such a deserted, desolate creature
as she was? Even in her hiding-place she was not long at peace. The
little children, with their curious eyes peering here and there, had
peeped through the hedge, and through the gate, and now they gathered
from all the four corners of the hamlet, and crowded round the gate;
and one more adventurous than the rest had run into the field to
cry, "Gi' me a halfpenny," which set the example to every little one,
emulous of his boldness; and there, where she sat, low on the ground,
and longing for the sure hiding-place earth gives to the weary, the
children kept running in, and pushing one another forwards, and
laughing. Poor things; their time had not come for understanding what
sorrow is. Ruth would have begged them to leave her alone, and not
madden her utterly; but they knew no English save the one eternal
"Gi' me a halfpenny." She felt in her heart that there was no pity
anywhere. Suddenly, while she thus doubted God, a shadow fell across
her garments, on which her miserable eyes were bent. She looked up.
The deformed gentleman she had twice before seen, stood there. He had
been attracted by the noisy little crowd, and had questioned them in
Welsh, but not understanding enough of the language to comprehend
their answers, he had obeyed their signs, and entered the gate to
which they pointed. There he saw the young girl whom he had noticed
at first for her innocent beauty, and the second time for the idea he
had gained respecting her situation; there he saw her, crouched up
like some hunted creature, with a wild, scared look of despair, which
almost made her lovely face seem fierce; he saw her dress soiled and
dim, her bonnet crushed and battered with her tossings to and fro on
the moorland bed; he saw the poor, lost wanderer, and when he saw
her, he had compassion on her.
There was some look of heavenly pity in his eyes, as gravely and
sadly they met her upturned gaze, which touched her stony heart.
Still looking at him, as if drawing some good influence from him,
she said low and mournfully, "He has left me, sir!--sir, he has
indeed--he has gone and left me!"
Before he could speak a word to comfort her, she had burst into the
wildest, dreariest crying ever mortal cried. The settled form of the
event, when put into words, went sharp to her heart; her moans and
sobs wrung his soul; but as no speech of his could be heard, if he
had been able to decide what best to say, he stood by her in apparent
calmness, while she, wretched, wailed and uttered her woe. But when
she lay worn out, and stupefied into silence, she heard him say to
himself, in a low voice:
"Oh, my God! for Christ's sake, pity her!"
Ruth lifted up her eyes, and looked at him with a dim perception of
the meaning of his words. She regarded him fixedly in a dreamy way,
as if they struck some chord in her heart, and she were listening to
its echo; and so it was. His pitiful look, or his words, reminded her
of the childish days when she knelt at her mother's knee, and she was
only conscious of a straining, longing desire to recall it all.
He let her take her time, partly because he was powerfully affected
himself by all the circumstances, and by the sad pale face upturned
to his; and partly by an instinctive consciousness that the softest
patience was required. But suddenly she startled him, as she herself
was startled into a keen sense of the suffering agony of the present;
she sprang up and pushed him aside, and went rapidly towards the gate
of the field. He could not move as quickly as most men, but he put
forth his utmost speed. He followed across the road, on to the rocky
common; but as he went along, with his uncertain gait, in the dusk
gloaming, he stumbled, and fell over some sharp projecting stone. The
acute pain which shot up his back forced a short cry from him; and,
when bird and beast are hushed into rest and the stillness of the
night is over all, a high-pitched sound, like the voice of pain,
is carried far in the quiet air. Ruth, speeding on in her despair,
heard the sharp utterance, and stopped suddenly short. It did what
no remonstrance could have done; it called her out of herself. The
tender nature was in her still, in that hour when all good angels
seemed to have abandoned her. In the old days she could never bear
to hear or see bodily suffering in any of God's meanest creatures,
without trying to succour them; and now, in her rush to the awful
death of the suicide, she stayed her wild steps, and turned to find
from whom that sharp sound of anguish had issued.
He lay among the white stones, too faint with pain to move, but with
an agony in his mind far keener than any bodily pain, as he thought
that by his unfortunate fall he had lost all chance of saving her.
He was almost overpowered by his intense thankfulness when he saw
her white figure pause, and stand listening, and turn again with
slow footsteps, as if searching for some lost thing. He could hardly
speak, but he made a sound which, though his heart was inexpressibly
glad, was like a groan. She came quickly towards him.
"I am hurt," said he; "do not leave me;" his disabled and tender
frame was overcome by the accident and the previous emotions, and he
fainted away. Ruth flew to the little mountain stream, the dashing
sound of whose waters had been tempting her, but a moment before, to
seek forgetfulness in the deep pool into which they fell. She made a
basin of her joined hands, and carried enough of the cold fresh water
back to dash into his face and restore him to consciousness. While he
still kept silence, uncertain what to say best fitted to induce her
to listen to him, she said softly:
"Are you better, sir?--are you very much hurt?"
"Not very much; I am better. Any quick movement is apt to cause me a
sudden loss of power in my back, and I believe I stumbled over some
of these projecting stones. It will soon go off, and you will help me
to go home, I am sure."
"Oh, yes! Can you go now? I am afraid of your lying too long on this
heather; there is a heavy dew."
He was so anxious to comply with her wish, and not weary out her
thought for him, and so turn her back upon herself, that he tried to
rise. The pain was acute, and this she saw.
"Don't hurry yourself, sir; I can wait."
Then came across her mind the recollection of the business that was
thus deferred; but the few homely words which had been exchanged
between them seemed to have awakened her from her madness. She sat
down by him, and, covering her face with her hands, cried mournfully
and unceasingly. She forgot his presence, and yet she had a
consciousness that some one looked for her kind offices, that she
was wanted in the world, and must not rush hastily out of it. The
consciousness did not take this definite form, it did not become a
thought, but it kept her still, and it was gradually soothing her.
"Can you help me to rise now?" said he, after a while. She did not
speak, but she helped him up, and then he took her arm, and she led
him tenderly through all the little velvet paths, where the turf grew
short and soft between the rugged stones. Once more on the highway,
they slowly passed along in the moonlight. He guided her by a slight
motion of the arm, through the more unfrequented lanes, to his
lodgings at the shop; for he thought for her, and conceived the pain
she would have in seeing the lighted windows of the inn. He leant
more heavily on her arm, as they awaited the opening of the door.
"Come in," said he, not relaxing his hold, and yet dreading to
tighten it, lest she should defy restraint, and once more rush away.
They went slowly into the little parlour behind the shop. The
bonny-looking hostess, Mrs Hughes by name, made haste to light the
candle, and then they saw each other, face to face. The deformed
gentleman looked very pale, but Ruth looked as if the shadow of death
was upon her.