Delphi Complete Works of the Brontes Charlotte, Emily, Anne Brontë (Illustrated) (262 page)

PART I

[dated May 1853]

I will not deny that I took a pleasure in studying the character of Mrs Widdup, nor that to me she seemed to possess a good deal of worth of a particular kind. Thirty years ago (our acquaintance dated its commencement thus far back) I had believed very heartily in her worth without studying her character. She then ruled me as one of a flock of four – her nurslings. Of this flock I was not her favourite; indeed my place was lowest in her grace. Even through boyhood and adolescence she held me for a riddle rather than a model. After two decades of separation and more than half a generations’s change beheld us again under the same roof, still the housekeeper of Ellin Hall, while respecting its master, revolved him day and night as an unsolved conundrum.

It was and must be so: habit and circumstances attached us, but nothing could combine, nothing quite unfold.

In a certain sense Mrs Widdup was spotlessly honest; she had the fidelity of a consistent and steady nature; she was a partisan in friendship, an unflinching foe; she was usually humane and cheerful. She was narrow-minded, loved money, and by natural instinct still leant to the guidance of interest. Fidelity, partisanship, interest, all counselled her to attachment to the Ellin family, and accordingly she was attached to me, that family’s surviving representative.

Ellin Hall had for five ages been the home of the Ellins. In my youth it passed out of their hands. My eldest half-brother sold it. He died suddenly, leaving neither will nor direct heir; his fortune fell to me, and I purchased back the ancient homestead. That eldest half-brother of mine was a stronger man in body and a tyrant in heart. I would advert to his deeds, but they are such as we suffer Death to cancel from memory.

PART II

[dated 22 June 1853]

In other countries, and in distant times, it is possible that more of my kind might have been attracted to human dwellings – hut or mansion – and secretly taken them in lease, than for these hundred years past have been known to make their home in such abodes. Yet we were always few, our presence rare, its signs faint, and its proofs difficult to seize.

My house was not picturesque: it had no turrets, no battlements, no mullioned or lozenged windows. From the first, however, I believe its stones were grey, dug from a grey quarry on a grey waste. They who planned it had loved fresh air, and had chosen a raised site, building it where the green ground swelled highest. Its outlook was free and four-fold: it commanded both sunrise and sunset, and viewed an equal and a wide expanse north and south. These builders, too, preferred solitude to convenience: the village was distant – near enough, perhaps, in summer weather, but remote for a winter’s day walk. As to a sentimental peculiarity of the vicinage, I believe the first owners had not known nor reckoned it in their choice of ground. The short, green, flower-bearing turf around covered an ancient burying-ground – so ancient that all the sleepers under the flowers had long ago ceased to be either clay or bone, and were become fine mould, throwing out violets in May, and a carpet of close silken grass all spring, summer, and autumn. These violets were white, and in their season they gathered thickly in a bleached wreath about what seemed a deep-sunk and iron-grey rock – the sole left foundation stone of a forgotten chapel, or the basement of a cross broken away. A quiet gable of the house looked upon this mossy bit of mead. In the lower story of the gable was no aperture, in the upper a single window, having before it a balcony of stone, a peculiarity rare in that neighbourhood, forming indeed the distinctive feature of the house and originating its name – Ellin Balcony.

Who am I? Was I owner of the house? No. Was I its resident tenant, taking it perhaps on lease, and paying the rent? No. Was I a child of the family? No. A servant? No. Ask me no more questions for they are difficult to meet. I was there, and it was my house.

I recollect the first hour that I knew it. I came to consciousness at a moment within the rim of twilight. I came upward out of earth – not downward from heaven, and what first welcomed and seemed to aid me to life was a large disk high over me, a globule, clear, cragged, and desolate. I saw the moon before I could see the sky; but that too, night-veiled and star-inspired, soon opened for me. A sweet silence watched my birth-hour. I took affection for this mossy spot, I stole all through building and nook of land. In the mild beam and pure humidity of a midsummer night I found my seal and sign printed here in dew and there in moonbeam on roof and lawn of Ellin Balcony.

I do not know that ever I was knit with humanity, or was mixed with the mystery of existence as men or women know it. Yet had no mortal relic slumbered near the Balcony, should I have risen? Would Night, my mother, have borne me, unwedded to a certain vital, mortal essence?

Tears had watered this ground; great sorrows and strong feelings had gathered here. Could a colder soil, drenched only with rain and visited only by airs and shadows, have yielded me as its produce?

I even think that some one sleeper threw me out of a great labouring heart which had toiled terribly through his thirty, or sixty, or fourscore years of work, had lived and throbbed strongly, stood still while yet in vigour, and buried, yet warm and scarce arrested, had thrown forth its unslackened glow and ill-checked action in an essence bodiless and incomplete, yet penetrative and subtle.

I believe this because my relations to men were so limited. To millions I felt no tie, found no approach; to tens I might draw gently. Whether units existed that could more actively attract it, yet lay with time and chance to show.

Whoever in my early days were the inmates of Ellin Balcony, on me they made no impression. I knew every stone in the walls. I knew the neighbourhood – the knolls, the lanes, the turfed wastes, all vegetable growth, field flowers, hedge plants, yellow gorse and broom, foxglove springing bright out of stony soil, ivy on ground or wall. I distinguished and now remember these things very well. I knew the seasons, the faces of summer and winter. Spring and autumn were familiar in their skies; night, day, and the hours were all acquaintances. Storm and fair weather complete my reminiscences. I cannot recall anything human, and yet humanity was in the house. Experience now tells me that it must have been busy, bustling humanity, an alert current of life flowing out after to towns and thickly peopled scenes, returning thence with accessions – life circulating in a free, ordinary channel, never stealing slow under the banks of thought, never winding in deeps, but coursing parallel with populous highways. At last, I suppose, this practical daily life forsook retirement and went permanently away to the towns which were its natural sphere. This departure made no difference to me, except that I remember looking at the sun and listening to the wind with a new holiday feeling of unconstraint.

About this time I first added a cognisance of the individual human being to a vague impression of a human race existing. A solitary old woman became housekeeper of Ellin Balcony. She used to feed a great dog chained in the now empty yard, to close and open shutters, to knit a great deal, and read and think a little. I believe it was because she
did
think, however little, that I had the power to perceive her presence. Those who had lived here before her never thought, and into an existence all material I could not enter.

PART III

I

Old Mrs Hill, the solitary housekeeper of Ellin Balcony, was sitting one day in her kitchen reading a pamphlet-sermon as old as herself, when, just as her kettle began to simmer for tea, she thought she heard a noise like the jar of the iron gate opening from a bridle road which approached the lone house. She held her hand, checked her clicking needles and listened. Was it an arrival? It was no more than the wind, which, when it blew as it now did from the south, could rattle that gate like a hand. Sedately superstitious, Mrs Hill, every day and every night, heard noises about this deserted place which scared her, but, firm-nerved, her fears never passed her lips or affected her movements. She passed the jar over and resumed her stocking.

True, there blew a south wind, but in a low key. It shook nothing; it sighed only along the natural avenue which darkened above a path conducting upward from the gate. At this moment the shadow fell not on the path only, but on a small wayfarer – a child’s figure – perhaps a little rustic venturing through this gate and up this tree-dark way as a short cut to the bourn of some errand. Is his garb coloured like the path? Does it make a concord with gravel, moss, tree, stem? Are his cheeks and hands berry-brown and red?

Not at all; the shape is less picturesque. It is civilised and slender, a contrast with adjuncts, not a harmony. The dress was made in a town; the hair is long and waved, the face is fair, the countenance is informed. This seems to be a gentleman schoolboy, perhaps ten years old. He must have walked far to-day; he is footsore, pale, and with a few more miles of pilgrimage would become exhausted. He carries a knapsack, a light burden, but his weary shoulder aches under it. Emerging from the avenue, he halts on the little lawn, and looks at Ellin Balcony.

He has measured the house, surveyed the enclosed ground, glanced down into the wooded valley and up at the barer and greyer hills towards which the Balcony fronts. He approaches the door.

The old lonely knitter was winding the worsted round her ball, and folding her knitting, preparatory to taking off the fire the kettle, which now boiled, when the house thrilled to a knock, a loud though brief knock at the front door. She started – and might well start, for it was the first time she had been thus summoned since she kept the Balcony. She ran amazed, she opened, and saw on the step a boy, well clad but dusty, viewing her from under light-complexioned brows with direct clear blue eyes.

‘They call you Mrs Hill?’ said he.

He was answered affirmatively.

‘And this place is “Ellin Balcony”?’

‘Yes.’

‘If you please, then, let me pass. I should like to come in; I should like well to come in. I’m tired.’

‘But, master — ’ Mrs Hill paused astonished, as if a sudden light broke on her. She quickly pursued – ‘Surely you are not an Ellin of Golpit, surely not the little one – the baby?’

‘I’m Willie, that is William Ellin, and I came this very day from Golpit – fifteen miles, a long way. I’m tired.’

Mrs Hill let him pass. She took him to the kitchen, and he sat down in a chair that stood on the hearth.

‘You
are
the baby, then?’ cried the housekeeper.

‘Perhaps I was a baby when you saw me. I hope I’m a boy now.’

‘How old. Master Ellin?’

‘Ten and a half, but I’m a thin boy.’

‘You are thin and white. Have you good health?’

‘Capital – when they let me.’

‘You are like your mother.’

‘Am I like mamma? I’m glad of it!’

‘You have her mouth, you speak like her. But what, Master William, brought a child like you alone from Golpit?’

‘Several things, Mrs Hill. I can’t tell you all in a minute – only here I am, and very hungry and tired.’

‘Hungry!’ echoed Mrs Hill: ‘I’m afraid he is hungry,’ and she hastened to get a tray and cups.

Before the boy took his tea he asked his hostess to fasten both outer doors of the house. When this was done he said, ‘Now I’m safe,’ and proceeded to eat with appetite. The meal over, he lay down on a kind of settle. He folded both hands under his head, but did not close his eyes; he was pale but had no look of langour.

‘Mrs Hill,’ he resumed, ‘you knew my mother?’

‘I stayed with her in her last sickness. Master Willie.’

‘Had she much pain when she was ill?’

‘Sometimes she suffered greatly.’

‘Was she patient, or not?’

‘She was silent when she suffered, and bore wonderfully.’

‘She cared for me, didn’t she, Mrs Hill?’

‘Beyond words,’ said the housekeeper. ‘And we all used to think you took greatly to your mamma.’

‘Well, I suppose it was so. I was not much more than three years old when she died, but I remember her. I have wanted her always, and I shall be glad when I grow out of the habit of thinking about her, as she can never come back.’

‘You must have something of her nature in you,’ was the reply, ‘and I see you have. But I am afraid you have not found many friends, or your mind would not dwell in this way on a dead person.’

‘No more it would, I daresay,’ replied the lad.

‘Do they treat you well at Golpit, Master Willie?’

‘I have run away, Mrs Hill.’

‘Child, where do you mean to go to, and what will you do?’

‘I shall think about it. You must hide me here for a day or two.’

‘What has happened wrong? Do they starve you?’

‘Oh no, I get enough to eat, but Edward’s hand and stick are so heavy.’

‘Ah! Mr Ellin never liked either you or your mother.’

‘I believe he was a cruel stepson, Mrs Hill – he still speaks so savagely about mamma at times.’

‘And does he strike you, child?’

‘If he thinks me slow in the business, which I find dry and hard enough to learn, he knocks my head about till it aches. It is very seldom that I cry, but if I look dull after punishment, he calls me a disaffected rebel, and strikes again. Last night he had been making bargains, and had taken some brandy and water. He knocked me down with a stool, for no particular reason that I know of, unless it is that in some moods he hates the sight of me. My temple was cut with the sharp comer of the stool. I wish, Mrs Hill, you would give me a little warm water to wash it. It is sore and burning now, after my long walk.’

The housekeeper soon brought him a basin of water. She wished to aid him, but he took the sponge himself, and pushing aside his fair brown hair, discovered in the blue-veined temple a rough laceration and dark bruise – it was now darkened with blood – but he soon washed it clean, and then Mrs Hill bound it up carefully.

‘My lamb,’ said she, compassionately, ‘this is wicked work.’

‘Old lady, I am not a lamb,’ replied the boy, while his eyes laughed. ‘And after all it is not so much the knock I think about. I did not run away on that account.’

‘What could it be for?’

‘Because Edward threatened me with something I really should dread. It seems I am quite in his power, as my parents left me no money.’

‘I know, child. Your stepbrother’s property came to him in his mother’s, your father’s first wife’s, right. You are dependent on him, as they say.’

‘Yes, and he tells me he will bring me up as becomes a beggar – he will make me a shop apprentice. I can’t bear it, Mrs Hill.’

The old lady shook her head, and looked somewhat at a loss for a response.

‘I can’t bear it. I don’t want to live with shop boys, and stand behind a counter. My mother was a lady – I ought to be a gentleman.’

‘But you’ve no money; you can’t choose. You must learn a trade.’

‘We have never had traders in our family for I don’t know how long till Edward out of greediness went into business. My father and grandfather and great-grandfather lived here at Ellin Balcony and farmed their own land, and were squires.’

‘Yes, and lessened their income little by little. Ellin Balcony would have had to be sold if your brother had not removed into premises at Golpit, and gone, as you say, into business.’

‘Would it?’

‘Aye; and mind me, you can’t do better than follow his example. Would he take you into his own counting house?’

‘I should be so miserable.’

The poor lad groaned.

‘But, remember,’ said Mrs Hill, with much sympathy, but also with deep warning in her tone, ‘you are without friends, Master Willie. Edward is your only chance: displease him as little and obey him as much as you can.’

‘Can’t I go to sea, or be a soldier?’

‘You can’t – indeed you can’t.’

‘But Edward is cruel, Mrs Hill; he persecutes me, I think. I don’t complain much, I don’t tell you all, but indeed I hardly know how to go on living as I have lived for some years.’

‘You must look to God – you must, my poor child. It is all that sufferers, whether grown up or little ones, can do in this weary world.’

‘I wonder if mamma knows about me, Mrs Hill? I sometimes hope not, lest she should be unhappy in Heaven.’

‘Do you say your prayers at night? Have they ever taught you to pray?’

‘Yes,’ said he briefly. ’
They
never taught me – that is, Edward and his wife never taught me my prayers, but I learnt them of mamma, and remember them yet.’

‘Don’t forget them. Will you go to bed now?’

‘Yes, if you please. I’m tired.’

After Mrs Hill had taken the child upstairs and shown him his room, containing a spare bed she always kept dry and aired, he came to the staircase head, and called out anxiously, yet quietly:

‘Lock the doors fast, Mrs Hill. Let nobody in, and tell nobody there is a strange boy in the house.

She promised accordingly.

Worn out with fatigue, he slept till late the next morning. He had not yet risen when the iron gate clashed back and a gig drove furiously up the avenue. In an instant a man athletic and red-whiskered bounded to the yard pavement, entered the kitchen door, and seemed to take house and housekeeper by storm.

‘Where is the cub? I tracked him here by sure marks, so let us have no lies. Where is he?’

‘Mr Ellin, what can you mean?’

Mr Ellin held up a clenched fist in the old woman’s face, shook it between her two eyes, pronounced an oath, and dashed upstairs.

There were seven bedrooms. He tried the doors of six – they yielded. He entered, and found empty rooms. Testing the seventh door, he found that it resisted his hand – a drawn bolt opposed him.

‘Run down!’ said he. ‘I have him now. William Ellin!’

‘Yes, Edward,’ said a child’s voice.

‘Open this door!’ (Oath accompanying).

‘I would open it directly if you would promise not to strike – at least, not hard.’

For answer the great athlete vigorously shook the slight door.

‘
I
promise!’ he yelled. ‘I’ll see you,’ etc.

Silence within. Again the door was made to quiver.