After the stun of the blow came the realization of the consequences.
Susan would sit for hours trying patiently to recall and piece together
fragments of recollection and consciousness in her brother’s mind. She
would let him go and pursue some senseless bit of play, and wait until
she could catch his eye or his attention again, when she would resume
her self-imposed task. Michael complained that she never had a word for
him, or a minute of time to spend with him now; but she only said she
must try, while there was yet a chance, to bring back her brother’s
lost wits. As for marriage in this state of uncertainty, she had no
heart to think of it. Then Michael stormed, and absented himself for
two or three days; but it was of no use. When he came back, he saw that
she had been crying till her eyes were all swollen up, and he gathered
from Peggy’s scoldings (which she did not spare him) that Susan had
eaten nothing since he went away. But she was as inflexible as ever.
“Not just yet. Only not just yet. And don’t say again that I do not
love you,” said she, suddenly hiding herself in his arms.
And so matters went on through August. The crop of oats was gathered
in; the wheat-field was not ready as yet, when one fine day Michael
drove up in a borrowed shandry, and offered to take Willie a ride. His
manner, when Susan asked him where he was going to, was rather
confused; but the answer was straight and clear enough.
He had business in Ambleside. He would never lose sight of the lad, and
have him back safe and sound before dark. So Susan let him go.
Before night they were at home again: Willie in high delight at a
little rattling paper windmill that Michael had bought for him in the
street, and striving to imitate this new sound with perpetual buzzings.
Michael, too, looked pleased. Susan knew the look, although afterwards
she remembered that he had tried to veil it from her, and had assumed a
grave appearance of sorrow whenever he caught her eye. He put up his
horse; for, although he had three miles further to go, the moon was
up—the bonny harvest-moon—and he did not care how late he had to drive
on such a road by such a light. After the supper which Susan had
prepared for the travellers was over, Peggy went up-stairs to see
Willie safe in bed; for he had to have the same care taken of him that
a little child of four years old requires.
Michael drew near to Susan.
“Susan,” said he, “I took Will to see Dr. Preston, at Kendal. He’s the
first doctor in the county. I thought it were better for us—for you—to
know at once what chance there were for him.”
“Well!” said Susan, looking eagerly up. She saw the same strange glance
of satisfaction, the same instant change to apparent regret and pain.
“What did he say?” said she. “Speak! can’t you?”
“He said he would never get better of his weakness.”
“Never!”
“No; never. It’s a long word, and hard to bear. And there’s worse to
come, dearest. The doctor thinks he will get badder from year to year.
And he said, if he was us—you—he would send him off in time to
Lancaster Asylum. They’ve ways there both of keeping such people in
order and making them happy. I only tell you what he said,” continued
he, seeing the gathering storm in her face.
“There was no harm in his saying it,” she replied, with great
self-constraint, forcing herself to speak coldly instead of angrily.
“Folk is welcome to their opinions.”
They sat silent for a minute or two, her breast heaving with suppressed
feeling.
“He’s counted a very clever man,” said Michael at length.
“He may be. He’s none of my clever men, nor am I going to be guided by
him, whatever he may think. And I don’t thank them that went and took
my poor lad to have such harsh notions formed about him. If I’d been
there, I could have called out the sense that is in him.”
“Well! I’ll not say more to-night, Susan. You’re not taking it rightly,
and I’d best be gone, and leave you to think it over. I’ll not deny
they are hard words to hear, but there’s sense in them, as I take it;
and I reckon you’ll have to come to ’em. Anyhow, it’s a bad way of
thanking me for my pains, and I don’t take it well in you, Susan,” said
he, getting up, as if offended.
“Michael, I’m beside myself with sorrow. Don’t blame me if I speak
sharp. He and me is the only ones, you see. And mother did so charge me
to have a care of him! And this is what he’s come to, poor lile chap!”
She began to cry, and Michael to comfort her with caresses.
“Don’t,” said she. “It’s no use trying to make me forget poor Willie is
a natural. I could hate myself for being happy with you, even for just
a little minute. Go away, and leave me to face it out.”
“And you’ll think it over, Susan, and remember what the doctor says?”
“I can’t forget,” said she. She meant she could not forget what the
doctor had said about the hopelessness of her brother’s case; Michael
had referred to the plan of sending Willie to an asylum, or madhouse,
as they were called in that day and place. The idea had been gathering
force in Michael’s mind for some time; he had talked it over with his
father, and secretly rejoiced over the possession of the farm and land
which would then be his in fact, if not in law, by right of his wife.
He had always considered the good penny her father could give her in
his catalogue of Susan’s charms and attractions. But of late he had
grown to esteem her as the heiress of Yew Nook. He, too, should have
land like his brother—land to possess, to cultivate, to make profit
from, to bequeath. For some time he had wondered that Susan had been so
much absorbed in Willie’s present, that she had never seemed to look
forward to his future, state. Michael had long felt the boy to be a
trouble; but of late he had absolutely loathed him. His gibbering, his
uncouth gestures, his loose, shambling gait, all irritated Michael
inexpressibly. He did not come near the Yew Nook for a couple of days.
He thought that he would leave her time to become anxious to see him
and reconciled to his plan. They were strange lonely days to Susan.
They were the first she had spent face to face with the sorrows that
had turned her from a girl into a woman; for hitherto Michael had never
let twenty-four hours pass by without coming to see her since she had
had the fever. Now that he was absent, it seemed as though some cause
of irritation was removed from Will, who was much more gentle and
tractable than he had been for many weeks. Susan thought that she
observed him making efforts at her bidding, and there was something
piteous in the way in which he crept up to her, and looked wistfully in
her face, as if asking her to restore him the faculties that he felt to
be wanting.
“I never will let thee go, lad. Never! There’s no knowing where they
would take thee to, or what they would do with thee. As it says in the
Bible, ‘Nought but death shall part thee and me!’”
The country-side was full, in those days, of stories of the brutal
treatment offered to the insane; stories that were, in fact, but too
well founded, and the truth of one of which only would have been a
sufficient reason for the strong prejudice existing against all such
places. Each succeeding hour that Susan passed, alone, or with the poor
affectionate lad for her sole companion, served to deepen her solemn
resolution never to part with him. So, when Michael came, he was
annoyed and surprised by the calm way in which she spoke, as if
following Dr. Preston’s advice was utterly and entirely out of the
question. He had expected nothing less than a consent, reluctant it
might be, but still a consent; and he was extremely irritated. He could
have repressed his anger, but he chose rather to give way to it;
thinking that he could thus best work upon Susan’s affection, so as to
gain his point. But, somehow, he over-reached himself; and now he was
astonished in his turn at the passion of indignation that she burst
into.
“Thou wilt not bide in the same house with him, say’st thou? There’s no
need for thy biding, as far as I can tell. There’s solemn reason why I
should bide with my own flesh and blood and keep to the word I pledged
my mother on her death-bed; but, as for thee, there’s no tie that I
know on to keep thee fro’ going to America or Botany Bay this very
night, if that were thy inclination. I will have no more of your
threats to make me send my bairn away. If thou marry me, thou’lt help
me to take charge of Willie. If thou doesn’t choose to marry me on
those terms—why, I can snap my fingers at thee, never fear. I’m not so
far gone in love as that. But I will not have thee, if thou say’st in
such a hectoring way that Willie must go out of the house—and the house
his own too—before thoul’t set foot in it. Willie bides here, and I
bide with him.”
“Thou hast may-be spoken a word too much,” said Michael, pale with
rage. “If I am free, as thou say’st, to go to Canada, or Botany Bay, I
reckon I’m free to live where I like, and that will not be with a
natural who may turn into a madman some day, for aught I know. Choose
between him and me, Susy, for I swear to thee, thou shan’t have both.”
“I have chosen,” said Susan, now perfectly composed and still.
“Whatever comes of it, I bide with Willie.”
“Very well,” replied Michael, trying to assume an equal composure of
manner. “Then I’ll wish you a very good night.” He went out of the
house door, half-expecting to be called back again; but, instead, he
heard a hasty step inside, and a bolt drawn.
“Whew!” said he to himself, “I think I must leave my lady alone for a
week or two, and give her time to come to her senses. She’ll not find
it so easy as she thinks to let me go.”
So he went past the kitchen-window in nonchalant style, and was not
seen again at Yew Nook for some weeks. How did he pass the time? For
the first day or two, he was unusually cross with all things and people
that came athwart him. Then wheat-harvest began, and he was busy, and
exultant about his heavy crop. Then a man came from a distance to bid
for the lease of his farm, which, by his father’s advice, had been
offered for sale, as he himself was so soon likely to remove to the Yew
Nook. He had so little idea that Susan really would remain firm to her
determination, that he at once began to haggle with the man who came
after his farm, showed him the crop just got in, and managed skilfully
enough to make a good bargain for himself. Of course, the bargain had
to be sealed at the public-house; and the companions he met with there
soon became friends enough to tempt him into Langdale, where again he
met with Eleanor Hebthwaite.
How did Susan pass the time? For the first day or so, she was too angry
and offended to cry. She went about her household duties in a quick,
sharp, jerking, yet absent way; shrinking one moment from Will,
overwhelming him with remorseful caresses the next. The third day of
Michael’s absence, she had the relief of a good fit of crying; and
after that, she grew softer and more tender; she felt how harshly she
had spoken to him, and remembered how angry she had been. She made
excuses for him. “It was no wonder,” she said to herself, “that he had
been vexed with her; and no wonder he would not give in, when she had
never tried to speak gently or to reason with him. She was to blame,
and she would tell him so, and tell him once again all that her mother
had bade her to be to Willie, and all the horrible stories she had
heard about madhouses, and he would be on her side at once.”
And so she watched for his coming, intending to apologise as soon as
ever she saw him. She hurried over her household work, in order to sit
quietly at her sewing, and hear the first distant sound of his
well-known step or whistle. But even the sound of her flying needle
seemed too loud—perhaps she was losing an exquisite instant of
anticipation; so she stopped sewing, and looked longingly out through
the geranium leaves, in order that her eye might catch the first stir
of the branches in the wood-path by which he generally came. Now and
then a bird might spring out of the covert; otherwise the leaves were
heavily still in the sultry weather of early autumn. Then she would
take up her sewing, and, with a spasm of resolution, she would
determine that a certain task should be fulfilled before she would
again allow herself the poignant luxury of expectation. Sick at heart
was she when the evening closed in, and the chances of that day
diminished. Yet she stayed up longer than usual, thinking that if he
were coming—if he were only passing along the distant road—the sight of
a light in the window might encourage him to make his appearance even
at that late hour, while seeing the house all darkened and shut up
might quench any such intention.
Very sick and weary at heart, she went to bed; too desolate and
despairing to cry, or make any moan. But in the morning hope came
afresh. Another day—another chance! And so it went on for weeks. Peggy
understood her young mistress’s sorrow full well, and respected it by
her silence on the subject. Willie seemed happier now that the
irritation of Michael’s presence was removed; for the poor idiot had a
sort of antipathy to Michael, which was a kind of heart’s echo to the
repugnance in which the latter held him. Altogether, just at this time,
Willie was the happiest of the three.
As Susan went into Coniston, to sell her butter, one Saturday, some
inconsiderate person told her that she had seen Michael Hurst the night
before. I said inconsiderate, but I might rather have said unobservant;
for any one who had spent half-an-hour in Susan Dixon’s company might
have seen that she disliked having any reference made to the subjects
nearest her heart, were they joyous or grievous. Now she went a little
paler than usual (and she had never recovered her colour since she had
had the fever), and tried to keep silence. But an irrepressible pang
forced out the question—
“Where?”
“At Thomas Applethwaite’s, in Langdale. They had a kind of
harvest-home, and he were there among the young folk, and very thick
wi’ Nelly Hebthwaite, old Thomas’s niece. Thou’lt have to look after
him a bit, Susan!”
She neither smiled nor sighed. The neighbour who had been speaking to
her was struck with the gray stillness of her face. Susan herself felt
how well her self-command was obeyed by every little muscle, and said
to herself in her Spartan manner, “I can bear it without either wincing
or blenching.” She went home early, at a tearing, passionate pace,
trampling and breaking through all obstacles of briar or bush. Willie
was moping in her absence—hanging listlessly on the farm-yard gate to
watch for her. When he saw her, he set up one of his strange,
inarticulate cries, of which she was now learning the meaning, and came
towards her with his loose, galloping run, head and limbs all shaking
and wagging with pleasant excitement. Suddenly she turned from him, and
burst into tears. She sat down on a stone by the wayside, not a hundred
yards from home, and buried her face in her hands, and gave way to a
passion of pent-up sorrow; so terrible and full of agony were her low
cries, that the idiot stood by her, aghast and silent. All his joy gone
for the time, but not, like her joy, turned into ashes. Some thought
struck him. Yes! the sight of her woe made him think, great as the
exertion was. He ran, and stumbled, and shambled home, buzzing with his
lips all the time. She never missed him. He came back in a trice,
bringing with him his cherished paper windmill, bought on that fatal
day when Michael had taken him into Kendal to have his doom of
perpetual idiocy pronounced. He thrust it into Susan’s face, her hands,
her lap, regardless of the injury his frail plaything thereby received.
He leapt before her to think how he had cured all heart-sorrow, buzzing
louder than ever. Susan looked up at him, and that glance of her sad
eyes sobered him. He began to whimper, he knew not why: and she now,
comforter in her turn, tried to soothe him by twirling his windmill.
But it was broken; it made no noise; it would not go round. This seemed
to afflict Susan more than him. She tried to make it right, although
she saw the task was hopeless; and while she did so, the tears rained
down unheeded from her bent head on the paper toy.
“It won’t do,” said she, at last. “It will never do again.” And,
somehow, she took the accident and her words as omens of the love that
was broken, and that she feared could never be pieced together more.
She rose up and took Willie’s hand, and the two went slowly into the
house.
To her surprise, Michael Hurst sat in the house-place. House-place is a
sort of better kitchen, where no cookery is done, but which is reserved
for state occasions. Michael had gone in there because he was
accompanied by his only sister, a woman older than himself, who was
well married beyond Keswick, and who now came for the first time to
make acquaintance with Susan. Michael had primed his sister with his
wishes regarding Will, and the position in which he stood with Susan;
and arriving at Yew Nook in the absence of the latter, he had not
scrupled to conduct his sister into the guest-room, as he held Mrs.
Gale’s worldly position in respect and admiration, and therefore wished
her to be favourably impressed with all the signs of property which he
was beginning to consider as Susan’s greatest charms. He had secretly
said to himself, that if Eleanor Hebthwaite and Susan Dixon were equal
in point of riches, he would sooner have Eleanor by far. He had begun
to consider Susan as a termagant; and when he thought of his
intercourse with her, recollections of her somewhat warm and hasty
temper came far more readily to his mind than any remembrance of her
generous, loving nature.
And now she stood face to face with him; her eyes tear-swollen, her
garments dusty, and here and there torn in consequence of her rapid
progress through the bushy by-paths. She did not make a favourable
impression on the well-clad Mrs. Gale, dressed in her best silk gown,
and therefore unusually susceptible to the appearance of another. Nor
were Susan’s manners gracious or cordial. How could they be, when she
remembered what had passed between Michael and herself the last time
they met? For her penitence had faded away under the daily
disappointment of these last weary weeks.
But she was hospitable in substance. She bade Peggy hurry on the
kettle, and busied herself among the tea-cups, thankful that the
presence of Mrs. Gale, as a stranger, would prevent the immediate
recurrence to the one subject which she felt must be present in
Michael’s mind as well as in her own. But Mrs. Gale was withheld by no
such feelings of delicacy. She had come ready-primed with the case, and
had undertaken to bring the girl to reason. There was no time to be
lost. It had been prearranged between the brother and sister that he
was to stroll out into the farm-yard before his sister introduced the
subject; but she was so confident in the success of her arguments, that
she must needs have the triumph of a victory as soon as possible; and,
accordingly, she brought a hail-storm of good reasons to bear upon
Susan. Susan did not reply for a long time; she was so indignant at
this intermeddling of a stranger in the deep family sorrow and shame.
Mrs. Gale thought she was gaining the day, and urged her arguments more
pitilessly. Even Michael winced for Susan, and wondered at her silence.
He shrank out of sight, and into the shadow, hoping that his sister
might prevail, but annoyed at the hard way in which she kept putting
the case.
Suddenly Susan turned round from the occupation she had pretended to be
engaged in, and said to him in a low voice, which yet not only vibrated
itself, but made its hearers thrill through all their obtuseness:
“Michael Hurst! does your sister speak truth, think you?”
Both women looked at him for his answer; Mrs. Gale without anxiety, for
had she not said the very words they had spoken together before? had
she not used the very arguments that he himself had suggested? Susan,
on the contrary, looked to his answer as settling her doom for life;
and in the gloom of her eyes you might have read more despair than
hope.
He shuffled his position. He shuffled in his words.
“What is it you ask? My sister has said many things.”
“I ask you,” said Susan, trying to give a crystal clearness both to her
expressions and her pronunciation, “if, knowing as you do how Will is
afflicted, you will help me to take that charge of him which I promised
my mother on her death-bed that I would do; and which means, that I
shall keep him always with me, and do all in my power to make his life
happy. If you will do this, I will be your wife; if not, I remain
unwed.”
“But he may get dangerous; he can be but a trouble; his being here is a
pain to you, Susan, not a pleasure.”
“I ask you for either yes or no,” said she, a little contempt at his
evading her question mingling with her tone. He perceived it, and it
nettled him.
“And I have told you. I answered your question the last time I was
here. I said I would ne’er keep house with an idiot; no more I will. So
now you’ve gotten your answer.”
“I have,” said Susan. And she sighed deeply.
“Come, now,” said Mrs. Gale, encouraged by the sigh; “one would think
you don’t love Michael, Susan, to be so stubborn in yielding to what
I’m sure would be best for the lad.”
“Oh! she does not care for me,” said Michael. “I don’t believe she ever
did.”
“Don’t I? Haven’t I?” asked Susan, her eyes blazing out fire. She left
the room directly, and sent Peggy in to make the tea; and catching at
Will, who was lounging about in the kitchen, she went up-stairs with
him and bolted herself in, straining the boy to her heart, and keeping
almost breathless, lest any noise she made might cause him to break out
into the howls and sounds which she could not bear that those below
should hear.
A knock at the door. It was Peggy.
“He wants for to see you, to wish you good-bye.”
“I cannot come. Oh, Peggy, send them away.”
It was her only cry for sympathy; and the old servant understood it.
She sent them away, somehow; not politely, as I have been given to
understand.
“Good go with them,” said Peggy, as she grimly watched their retreating
figures. “We’re rid of bad rubbish, anyhow.” And she turned into the
house, with the intention of making ready some refreshment for Susan,
after her hard day at the market, and her harder evening. But in the
kitchen, to which she passed through the empty house-place, making a
face of contemptuous dislike at the used tea-cups and fragments of a
meal yet standing there, she found Susan, with her sleeves tucked up
and her working apron on, busied in preparing to make clap-bread, one
of the hardest and hottest domestic tasks of a Daleswoman. She looked
up, and first met, and then avoided Peggy’s eye; it was too full of
sympathy. Her own cheeks were flushed, and her own eyes were dry and
burning.
“Where’s the board, Peggy? We need clap-bread; and, I reckon, I’ve time
to get through with it to-night.” Her voice had a sharp, dry tone in
it, and her motions a jerking angularity about them.
Peggy said nothing, but fetched her all that she needed. Susan beat her
cakes thin with vehement force. As she stooped over them, regardless
even of the task in which she seemed so much occupied, she was
surprised by a touch on her mouth of something—what she did not see at
first. It was a cup of tea, delicately sweetened and cooled, and held
to her lips, when exactly ready, by the faithful old woman. Susan held
it off a hand’s breath, and looked into Peggy’s eyes, while her own
filled with the strange relief of tears.
“Lass!” said Peggy, solemnly, “thou hast done well. It is not long to
bide, and then the end will come.”
“But you are very old, Peggy,” said Susan, quivering.
“It is but a day sin’ I were young,” replied Peggy; but she stopped the
conversation by again pushing the cup with gentle force to Susan’s dry
and thirsty lips. When she had drunken she fell again to her labour,
Peggy heating the hearth, and doing all that she knew would be
required, but never speaking another word. Willie basked close to the
fire, enjoying the animal luxury of warmth, for the autumn evenings
were beginning to be chilly. It was one o’clock before they thought of
going to bed on that memorable night.