Ruth (51 page)

"Yes. He has come to settle down here. I hope he may do well, and not
disappoint his father, who has formed very high expectations from
him; I am not sure if they are not too high for any young man to
realise." Mr Farquhar could have said more, but Dick Bradshaw was
Jemima's brother, and an object of anxiety to her.

"I am sure, I trust such a mortification—such a grief as any
disappointment in Richard, may not befall his father," replied Mr
Benson.

"Jemima—Miss Bradshaw," said Mr Farquhar, hesitating, "was most
anxious to hear of you all. I hope I may tell her you are all well"
(with an emphasis on
all
); "that—"

"Thank you. Thank her for us. We are all well; all except Leonard,
who is not strong, as I said before. But we must be patient. Time,
and such devoted, tender love as he has from his mother, must do
much."

Mr Farquhar was silent.

"Send him to my house for the papers. It will be a little necessity
for him to have some regular exercise, and to face the world. He must
do it, sooner or later."

The two gentlemen shook hands with each other on parting; but no
further allusion was made to either Ruth or Leonard.

So Leonard went for the papers. Stealing along by back
streets—running with his head bent down—his little heart panting
with dread of being pointed out as his mother's child—so he used to
come back, and run trembling to Sally, who would hush him up to her
breast with many a rough-spoken word of pity and sympathy.

Mr Farquhar tried to catch him to speak to him, and tame him as it
were; and, by-and-by, he contrived to interest him sufficiently to
induce the boy to stay a little while in the house, or stables, or
garden. But the race through the streets was always to be dreaded as
the end of ever so pleasant a visit.

Mr Farquhar kept up the intercourse with the Bensons which he had
thus begun. He persevered in paying calls—quiet visits, where
not much was said, political or local news talked about, and the
same inquiries always made and answered as to the welfare of the
two families, who were estranged from each other. Mr Farquhar's
reports were so little varied that Jemima grew anxious to know more
particulars.

"Oh, Mr Farquhar!" said she; "do you think they tell you the truth? I
wonder what Ruth can be doing to support herself and Leonard? Nothing
that you can hear of, you say; and, of course, one must not ask the
downright question. And yet I am sure they must be pinched in some
way. Do you think Leonard is stronger?"

"I am not sure. He is growing fast; and such a blow as he has had
will be certain to make him more thoughtful and full of care than
most boys of his age; both these circumstances may make him thin and
pale, which he certainly is."

"Oh! how I wish I might go and see them all! I could tell in a
twinkling the real state of things." She spoke with a tinge of her
old impatience.

"I will go again, and pay particular attention to anything you wish
me to observe. You see, of course, I feel a delicacy about asking
any direct questions, or even alluding in any way to these late
occurrences."

"And you never see Ruth by any chance?"

"Never!"

They did not look at each other while this last question was asked
and answered.

"I will take the paper to-morrow myself; it will be an excuse for
calling again, and I will try to be very penetrating; but I have not
much hope of success."

"Oh, thank you. It is giving you a great deal of trouble; but you are
very kind."

"Kind, Jemima!" he repeated, in a tone which made her go very red
and hot; "must I tell you how you can reward me?—Will you call me
Walter?—say, thank you, Walter—just for once."

Jemima felt herself yielding to the voice and tone in which this was
spoken; but her very consciousness of the depth of her love made her
afraid of giving way, and anxious to be wooed, that she might be
reinstated in her self-esteem.

"No!" said she, "I don't think I can call you so. You are too old. It
would not be respectful." She meant it half in joke, and had no idea
he would take the allusion to his age so seriously as he did. He rose
up, and coldly, as a matter of form, in a changed voice, wished her
"Good-bye." Her heart sank; yet the old pride was there. But as he
was at the very door, some sudden impulse made her speak:

"I have not vexed you, have I, Walter?"

He turned round, glowing with a thrill of delight. She was as red as
any rose; her looks dropped down to the ground.

They were not raised when, half an hour afterwards, she said, "You
won't forbid my going to see Ruth, will you? because if you do,
I give you notice I shall disobey you." The arm around her waist
clasped her yet more fondly at the idea, suggested by this speech, of
the control which he should have a right to exercise over her actions
at some future day.

"Tell me," said he, "how much of your goodness to me, this last happy
hour, has been owing to the desire of having more freedom as a wife
than as a daughter?"

She was almost glad that he should think she needed any additional
motive to her love for him before she could have accepted him. She
was afraid that she had betrayed the deep, passionate regard with
which she had long looked upon him. She was lost in delight at her
own happiness. She was silent for a time. At length she said:

"I don't think you know how faithful I have been to you ever since
the days when you first brought me pistachio-candy from London—when
I was quite a little girl."

"Not more faithful than I have been to you," for in truth, the
recollection of his love for Ruth had utterly faded away, and he
thought himself a model of constancy; "and you have tried me pretty
well. What a vixen you have been!"

Jemima sighed; smitten with the consciousness of how little she had
deserved her present happiness; humble with the recollection of the
evil thoughts that had raged in her heart during the time (which she
remembered well, though he might have forgotten it) when Ruth had had
the affection which her jealous rival coveted.

"I may speak to your father, may not I, Jemima?"

No! for some reason or fancy which she could not define, and
could not be persuaded out of, she wished to keep their mutual
understanding a secret. She had a natural desire to avoid the
congratulations she expected from her family. She dreaded her
father's consideration of the whole affair as a satisfactory disposal
of his daughter to a worthy man, who, being his partner, would not
require any abstraction of capital from the concern, and Richard's
more noisy delight at his sister's having "hooked" so good a match.
It was only her simple-hearted mother that she longed to tell. She
knew that her mother's congratulations would not jar upon her, though
they might not sound the full organ-peal of her love. But all that
her mother knew passed onwards to her father; so for the present,
at any rate, she determined to realise her secret position alone.
Somehow, the sympathy of all others that she most longed for was
Ruth's; but the first communication of such an event was due to
her parents. She imposed very strict regulations on Mr Farquhar's
behaviour; and quarrelled and differed from him more than ever, but
with a secret joyful understanding with him in her heart, even while
they disagreed with each other—for similarity of opinion is not
always—I think not often—needed for fulness and perfection of love.

After Ruth's "detection," as Mr Bradshaw used to call it, he said he
could never trust another governess again; so Mary and Elizabeth had
been sent to school the following Christmas, and their place in the
family was but poorly supplied by the return of Mr Richard Bradshaw,
who had left London, and been received as a partner.

The conversation narrated in the last chapter as taking place between
Mr Farquhar and Jemima, occurred about a year after Ruth's dismissal
from her situation. That year, full of small events, and change
of place to the Bradshaws, had been monotonous and long in its
course to the other household. There had been no want of peace and
tranquillity; there had, perhaps, been more of them than in the
preceding years, when, though unacknowledged by any, all must have
occasionally felt the oppression of the falsehood—and a slight
glancing dread must have flashed across their most prosperous state,
lest, somehow or another, the mystery should be disclosed. But now,
as the shepherd-boy in John Bunyan sweetly sang, "He that is low need
fear no fall."

Still, their peace was as the stillness of a grey autumnal day, when
no sun is to be seen above, and when a quiet film seems drawn before
both sky and earth, as if to rest the wearied eyes after the summer's
glare. Few events broke the monotony of their lives, and those events
were of a depressing kind. They consisted in Ruth's futile endeavours
to obtain some employment, however humble; in Leonard's fluctuations
of spirits and health; in Sally's increasing deafness; in the final
and unmendable wearing-out of the parlour carpet, which there was
no spare money to replace, and so they cheerfully supplied its want
by a large hearth-rug that Ruth made out of ends of list; and, what
was more a subject of unceasing regret to Mr Benson than all, the
defection of some of the members of his congregation, who followed
Mr Bradshaw's lead. Their places, to be sure, were more than filled
up by the poor, who thronged to his chapel; but still it was a
disappointment to find that people about whom he had been earnestly
thinking—to whom he had laboured to do good—should dissolve the
connexion without a word of farewell or explanation. Mr Benson did
not wonder that they should go; nay, he even felt it right that they
should seek that spiritual help from another, which he, by his error,
had forfeited his power to offer; he only wished they had spoken of
their intention to him in an open and manly way. But not the less did
he labour on among those to whom God permitted him to be of use. He
felt age stealing upon him apace, although he said nothing about
it, and no one seemed to be aware of it; and he worked the more
diligently while "it was yet day." It was not the number of his years
that made him feel old, for he was only sixty, and many men are hale
and strong at that time of life; in all probability, it was that
early injury to his spine which affected the constitution of his mind
as well as his body, and predisposed him, in the opinion of some at
least, to a feminine morbidness of conscience. He had shaken off
somewhat of this since the affair with Mr Bradshaw; he was simpler
and more dignified than he had been for several years before, during
which time he had been anxious and uncertain in his manner, and more
given to thought than to action.

The one happy bright spot in this grey year was owing to Sally. As
she said of herself, she believed she grew more "nattered" as she
grew older; but that she was conscious of her "natteredness" was
a new thing, and a great gain to the comfort of the house, for it
made her very grateful for forbearance, and more aware of kindness
than she had ever been before. She had become very deaf; yet she
was uneasy and jealous if she were not informed of all the family
thoughts, plans, and proceedings, which often had (however private in
their details) to be shouted to her at the full pitch of the voice.
But she always heard Leonard perfectly. His clear and bell-like
voice, which was similar to his mother's, till sorrow had taken the
ring out of it, was sure to be heard by the old servant, though
every one else had failed. Sometimes, however, she "got her hearing
sudden," as she phrased it, and was alive to every word and noise,
more particularly when they did not want her to hear; and at such
times she resented their continuance of the habit of speaking loud
as a mortal offence. One day, her indignation at being thought deaf
called out one of the rare smiles on Leonard's face; she saw it, and
said, "Bless thee, lad! if it but amuses thee, they may shout through
a ram's horn to me, and I'll never let on I'm not deaf. It's as good
a use as I can be of," she continued to herself, "if I can make that
poor lad smile a bit."

If she expected to be everybody's confidante, she made Leonard hers.
"There!" said she, when she came home from her marketing one Saturday
night, "look here, lad! Here's forty-two pound, seven shillings, and
twopence! It's a mint of money, isn't it? I took it all in sovereigns
for fear of fire."

"What is it all for, Sally?" said he.

"Aye, lad! that's asking. It's Mr Benson's money," said she,
mysteriously, "that I've been keeping for him. Is he in the study,
think ye?"

"Yes! I think so. Where have you been keeping it?"

"Never you mind!" She went towards the study, but thinking she might
have been hard on her darling in refusing to gratify his curiosity,
she turned back, and said:

"I say—if thou wilt, thou mayst do me a job of work some day. I'm
wanting a frame made for a piece of writing."

And then she returned to go into the study, carrying her sovereigns
in her apron.

"Here, Master Thurstan," said she, pouring them out on the table
before her astonished master. "Take it, it's all yours."

"All mine! What can you mean?" asked he, bewildered.

She did not hear him, and went on:

"Lock it up safe, out o' the way. Dunnot go and leave it about to
tempt folks. I'll not answer for myself if money's left about. I may
be cribbing a sovereign."

"But where does it come from?" said he.

"Come from!" she replied. "Where does all money come from, but the
bank, to be sure? I thought any one could tell that."

"I have no money in the bank!" said he, more and more perplexed.

"No! I knowed that; but I had. Dunnot ye remember how you would
raise my wage, last Martinmas eighteen year? You and Faith were very
headstrong, but I was too deep for you. See thee! I went and put
it i' th' bank. I was never going to touch it; and if I had died
it would have been all right, for I'd a will made, all regular and
tight—made by a lawyer (leastways he would have been a lawyer, if he
hadn't got transported first). And now, thinks I, I think I'll just
go and get it out and give it 'em. Banks is not always safe."