Ruth (6 page)

And last of all, Mrs Mason returned; and, summoning her "young
people" once more into the parlour, she read a prayer before
dismissing them to bed. She always expected to find them all in
the house when she came home, but asked no questions as to their
proceedings through the day; perhaps because she dreaded to hear
that one or two had occasionally nowhere to go, and that it would be
sometimes necessary to order a Sunday's dinner, and leave a lighted
fire on that day.

For five months Ruth had been an inmate at Mrs Mason's, and such had
been the regular order of the Sundays. While the forewoman stayed
there, it is true, she was ever ready to give Ruth the little variety
of hearing of recreations in which she was no partaker; and however
tired Jenny might be at night, she had ever some sympathy to bestow
on Ruth for the dull length of day she had passed. After her
departure, the monotonous idleness of the Sunday seemed worse to
bear than the incessant labour of the work-days; until the time came
when it seemed to be a recognised hope in her mind, that on Sunday
afternoons she should see Mr Bellingham, and hear a few words from
him, as from a friend who took an interest in her thoughts and
proceedings during the past week.

Ruth's mother had been the daughter of a poor curate in Norfolk,
and, early left without parents or home, she was thankful to marry
a respectable farmer a good deal older than herself. After their
marriage, however, everything seemed to go wrong. Mrs Hilton fell
into a delicate state of health, and was unable to bestow the
ever-watchful attention to domestic affairs so requisite in a
farmer's wife. Her husband had a series of misfortunes—of a more
important kind than the death of a whole brood of turkeys from
getting among the nettles, or the year of bad cheeses spoilt by a
careless dairymaid—which were the consequences (so the neighbours
said) of Mr Hilton's mistake in marrying a delicate, fine lady. His
crops failed; his horses died; his barn took fire; in short, if he
had been in any way a remarkable character, one might have supposed
him to be the object of an avenging fate, so successive were the
evils which pursued him; but as he was only a somewhat commonplace
farmer, I believe we must attribute his calamities to some want in
his character of the one quality required to act as keystone to many
excellences. While his wife lived, all worldly misfortunes seemed as
nothing to him; her strong sense and lively faculty of hope upheld
him from despair; her sympathy was always ready, and the invalid's
room had an atmosphere of peace and encouragement, which affected all
who entered it. But when Ruth was about twelve, one morning in the
busy hay-time, Mrs Hilton was left alone for some hours. This had
often happened before, nor had she seemed weaker than usual when they
had gone forth to the field; but on their return, with merry voices,
to fetch the dinner prepared for the haymakers, they found an unusual
silence brooding over the house; no low voice called out gently to
welcome them, and ask after the day's progress; and, on entering the
little parlour, which was called Mrs Hilton's, and was sacred to her,
they found her lying dead on her accustomed sofa. Quite calm and
peaceful she lay; there had been no struggle at last; the struggle
was for the survivors, and one sank under it. Her husband did not
make much ado at first—at least, not in outward show; her memory
seemed to keep in check all external violence of grief; but, day by
day, dating from his wife's death, his mental powers decreased. He
was still a hale-looking elderly man, and his bodily health appeared
as good as ever; but he sat for hours in his easy-chair, looking into
the fire, not moving, nor speaking, unless when it was absolutely
necessary to answer repeated questions. If Ruth, with coaxings and
draggings, induced him to come out with her, he went with measured
steps around his fields, his head bent to the ground with the
same abstracted, unseeing look; never smiling—never changing the
expression of his face, not even to one of deeper sadness, when
anything occurred which might be supposed to remind him of his dead
wife. But in this abstraction from all outward things, his worldly
affairs went ever lower down. He paid money away, or received it, as
if it had been so much water; the gold mines of Potosi could not have
touched the deep grief of his soul; but God in His mercy knew the
sure balm, and sent the Beautiful Messenger to take the weary one
home.

After his death, the creditors were the chief people who appeared to
take any interest in the affairs; and it seemed strange to Ruth to
see people, whom she scarcely knew, examining and touching all that
she had been accustomed to consider as precious and sacred. Her
father had made his will at her birth. With the pride of newly and
late-acquired paternity, he had considered the office of guardian to
his little darling as one which would have been an additional honour
to the lord-lieutenant of the county; but as he had not the pleasure
of his lordship's acquaintance, he selected the person of most
consequence amongst those whom he did know; not any very ambitious
appointment, in those days of comparative prosperity; but certainly
the flourishing maltster of Skelton was a little surprised, when,
fifteen years later, he learnt that he was executor to a will
bequeathing many vanished hundreds of pounds, and guardian to a young
girl whom he could not remember ever to have seen.

He was a sensible, hard-headed man of the world; having a very fair
proportion of conscience as consciences go; indeed, perhaps more than
many people; for he had some ideas of duty extending to the circle
beyond his own family; and did not, as some would have done, decline
acting altogether, but speedily summoned the creditors, examined
into the accounts, sold up the farming-stock, and discharged all the
debts; paid about £80 into the Skelton bank for a week, while he
inquired for a situation or apprenticeship of some kind for poor
heart-broken Ruth; heard of Mrs Mason's; arranged all with her in two
short conversations; drove over for Ruth in his gig; waited while she
and the old servant packed up her clothes; and grew very impatient
while she ran, with her eyes streaming with tears, round the garden,
tearing off in a passion of love whole boughs of favourite China and
damask roses, late flowering against the casement-window of what
had been her mother's room. When she took her seat in the gig, she
was little able, even if she had been inclined, to profit by her
guardian's lectures on economy and self-reliance; but she was quiet
and silent, looking forward with longing to the night-time, when, in
her bedroom, she might give way to all her passionate sorrow at being
wrenched from the home where she had lived with her parents, in that
utter absence of any anticipation of change, which is either the
blessing or the curse of childhood. But at night there were four
other girls in her room, and she could not cry before them. She
watched and waited till, one by one, they dropped off to sleep, and
then she buried her face in the pillow, and shook with sobbing grief;
and then she paused to conjure up, with fond luxuriance, every
recollection of the happy days, so little valued in their uneventful
peace while they lasted, so passionately regretted when once gone for
ever; to remember every look and word of the dear mother, and to moan
afresh over the change caused by her death;—the first clouding in
of Ruth's day of life. It was Jenny's sympathy on this first night,
when awakened by Ruth's irrepressible agony, that had made the bond
between them. But Ruth's loving disposition, continually sending
forth fibres in search of nutriment, found no other object for regard
among those of her daily life to compensate for the want of natural
ties.

But, almost insensibly, Jenny's place in Ruth's heart was filled
up; there was some one who listened with tender interest to all
her little revelations; who questioned her about her early days
of happiness, and, in return, spoke of his own childhood—not so
golden in reality as Ruth's, but more dazzling, when recounted
with stories of the beautiful cream-coloured Arabian pony, and the
old picture-gallery in the house, and avenues, and terraces, and
fountains in the garden, for Ruth to paint, with all the vividness
of imagination, as scenery and background for the figure which was
growing by slow degrees most prominent in her thoughts.

It must not be supposed that this was effected all at once, though
the intermediate stages have been passed over. On Sunday, Mr
Bellingham only spoke to her to receive the information about
the panel; nor did he come to St Nicholas' the next, nor yet the
following Sunday. But the third he walked by her side a little way,
and, seeing her annoyance, he left her; and then she wished for him
back again, and found the day very dreary, and wondered why a strange
undefined feeling had made her imagine she was doing wrong in walking
alongside of one so kind and good as Mr Bellingham; it had been very
foolish of her to be self-conscious all the time, and if ever he
spoke to her again she would not think of what people might say,
but enjoy the pleasure which his kind words and evident interest in
her might give. Then she thought it was very likely he never would
notice her again, for she knew she had been very rude with her short
answers; it was very provoking that she had behaved so rudely. She
should be sixteen in another month, and she was still childish and
awkward. Thus she lectured herself, after parting with Mr Bellingham;
and the consequence was, that on the following Sunday she was ten
times as blushing and conscious, and (Mr Bellingham thought) ten
times more beautiful than ever. He suggested, that instead of going
straight home through High-street, she should take the round by the
Leasowes; at first she declined, but then, suddenly wondering and
questioning herself why she refused a thing which was, as far as
reason and knowledge (
her
knowledge) went, so innocent, and which
was certainly so tempting and pleasant, she agreed to go the round;
and when she was once in the meadows that skirted the town, she
forgot all doubt and awkwardness—nay, almost forgot the presence of
Mr Bellingham—in her delight at the new tender beauty of an early
spring day in February. Among the last year's brown ruins, heaped
together by the wind in the hedgerows, she found the fresh green
crinkled leaves and pale star-like flowers of the primroses. Here and
there a golden celandine made brilliant the sides of the little brook
that (full of water in "February fill-dyke") bubbled along by the
side of the path; the sun was low in the horizon, and once, when they
came to a higher part of the Leasowes, Ruth burst into an exclamation
of delight at the evening glory of mellow light which was in the sky
behind the purple distance, while the brown leafless woods in the
foreground derived an almost metallic lustre from the golden mist and
haze of the sunset. It was but three-quarters of a mile round by the
meadows, but somehow it took them an hour to walk it. Ruth turned
to thank Mr Bellingham for his kindness in taking her home by this
beautiful way, but his look of admiration at her glowing, animated
face, made her suddenly silent; and, hardly wishing him good-bye, she
quickly entered the house with a beating, happy, agitated heart.

"How strange it is," she thought that evening, "that I should feel as
if this charming afternoon's walk were, somehow, not exactly wrong,
but yet as if it were not right. Why can it be? I am not defrauding
Mrs Mason of any of her time; that I know would be wrong; I am left
to go where I like on Sundays. I have been to church, so it can't be
because I have missed doing my duty. If I had gone this walk with
Jenny, I wonder whether I should have felt as I do now. There must
be something wrong in me, myself, to feel so guilty when I have done
nothing which is not right; and yet I can thank God for the happiness
I have had in this charming spring walk, which dear mamma used to say
was a sign when pleasures were innocent and good for us."

She was not conscious, as yet, that Mr Bellingham's presence had
added any charm to the ramble; and when she might have become aware
of this, as, week after week, Sunday after Sunday, loitering ramble
after loitering ramble succeeded each other, she was too much
absorbed with one set of thoughts to have much inclination for
self-questioning.

"Tell me everything, Ruth, as you would to a brother; let me help
you, if I can, in your difficulties," he said to her one afternoon.
And he really did try to understand, and to realise, how an
insignificant and paltry person like Mason the dressmaker could be an
object of dread, and regarded as a person having authority, by Ruth.
He flamed up with indignation when, by way of impressing him with Mrs
Mason's power and consequence, Ruth spoke of some instance of the
effects of her employer's displeasure. He declared his mother should
never have a gown made again by such a tyrant—such a Mrs Brownrigg;
that he would prevent all his acquaintances from going to such
a cruel dressmaker; till Ruth was alarmed at the threatened
consequences of her one-sided account, and pleaded for Mrs Mason as
earnestly as if a young man's menace of this description were likely
to be literally fulfilled.

"Indeed, sir, I have been very wrong; if you please, sir, don't be so
angry. She is often very good to us; it is only sometimes she goes
into a passion; and we are very provoking, I dare say. I know I am
for one. I have often to undo my work, and you can't think how it
spoils anything (particularly silk) to be unpicked; and Mrs Mason has
to bear all the blame. Oh! I am sorry I said anything about it. Don't
speak to your mother about it, pray, sir. Mrs Mason thinks so much of
Mrs Bellingham's custom."

"Well, I won't this time"—recollecting that there might be some
awkwardness in accounting to his mother for the means by which he
had obtained his very correct information as to what passed in Mrs
Mason's workroom—"but if ever she does so again, I'll not answer for
myself."