The Complete Short Stories of Elizabeth Gaskell - Elizabeth Gaskell

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the work was done; and loved the wild man for his rough gratitude; but it never occurred to the poor young clergyman, lying on his sickbed, and praying, as Miss Galindo had told us he did, to be forgiven for his unprofitable life, to think of Gregson’s reclaimed soul as anything with which he had had to do. It was now more than three months since Mr Gray had been at Hanbury Court. During all that time he had been confined to his house, if not to his sickbed, and he and my lady had never met since their last discussion and difference about Farmer Hale’s barn.

      This was not my dear lady’s fault; no one could have been more attentive in every way to the slightest possible want of either of the invalids, especially of Mr Gray. And she would have gone to see him at his own house, as she sent him word, but that her foot had slipped upon the polished oak staircase, and her ankle had been sprained.

      So we had never seen Mr Gray since his illness, when one November day he was announced as wishing to speak to my lady. She was sitting in her room – the room in which I lay now pretty constantly – and I remember she looked startled, when word was brought to her of Mr Gray’s being at the Hall.

      She could not go to him, she was too lame for that, so she bade him be shown into where she sat.

      “Such a day for him to go out!” she exclaimed, looking at the fog which had crept up to the windows, and was sapping the little remaining life in the brilliant Virginian creeper leaves that draperied the house on the terrace side.

      He came in white, trembling, his large eyes wild and dilated. He hastened up to Lady Ludlow’s chair, and, to my surprise, took one of her hands and kissed it, without speaking, yet shaking all over.

      “Mr Gray!” said she, quickly, with sharp, tremulous apprehension of some unknown evil. “What is it? There is something unusual about you.”

      “Something unusual has occurred,” replied he, forcing his words to be calm, as with a great effort. “A gentleman came to my house, not half an hour ago – a Mr Howard. He came straight from Vienna.”

      “My son!” said my dear lady, stretching out her arms in dumb questioning attitude.

      “The Lord gave and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

      But my poor lady could not echo the words. He was the last remaining child. And once she had been the joyful mother of nine.

      Chapter 12

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      I am ashamed to say what feeling became strongest in my mind about this time; next to the sympathy we all of us felt for my dear lady in her deep sorrow, I mean; for that was greater and stronger than anything else, however contradictory you may think it, when you hear all.

      It might arise from my being so far from well at the time, which produced a diseased mind in a diseased body; but I was absolutely jealous for my father’s memory, when I saw how many signs of grief there were for my lord’s death, he having done next to nothing for the village and parish, which now changed, as it were, its daily course of life, because his lordship died in a far off city. My father had spent the best years of his manhood in labouring hard, body and soul, for the people amongst whom he lived. His family, of course, claimed the first place in his heart; he would have been good for little, even in the way of benevolence, if they had not. But close after them he cared for his parishioners, and neighbours. And yet, when he died, though the church bells tolled, and smote upon our hearts with hard, fresh pain at every beat, the sounds of everyday life still went on, close pressing around us, – carts and carriages, street cries, distant barrel organs (the kindly neighbours kept them out of our street): life, active, noisy life, pressed on our acute consciousness of Death, and jarred upon it as on a quick nerve.

      And when we went to church, – my father’s own church, – though the pulpit cushions were black, and many of the congregation had put on some humble sign of mourning, yet it did not alter the whole material aspect of the place. And yet what was Lord Ludlow’s relation to Hanbury, compared to my father’s work and place in –?

      O! it was very wicked in me! I think if I had seen my lady, – if I had dared to ask to go to her, I should not have felt so miserable, so discontented. But she sat in her own room, hung with black, all, even over the shutters. She saw no light but that which was artificial – candles, lamps, and the like – for more than a month. Only Adams went near her. Mr Gray was not admitted, though he called daily. Even Mrs Medlicott did not see her for near a fortnight. The sight of my lady’s griefs, or rather the recollection of it, made Mrs Medlicott talk far more than was her wont. She told us, with many tears, and much gesticulation, even speaking German at times, when her English would not flow, that my lady sat there, a white figure in the middle of the darkened room; a shaded lamp near her, the light of which fell on an open Bible, – the great family Bible. It was not open at any chapter or consoling verse; but at the page whereon were registered the births of her nine children. Five had died in infancy, – sacrificed to the cruel system which forbade the mother to suckle her babies. Four had lived longer; Urian had been the first to die, Ughtred-Mortimar, Earl Ludlow, the last.

      My lady did not cry, Mrs Medlicott said. She was quite composed; very still, very silent. She put aside everything that savoured of mere business: sent people to Mr Horner for that. But she was proudly alive to every possible form which might do honour to the last of her race.

      In those days, expresses were slow things, and forms still slower. Before my lady’s directions could reach Vienna, my lord was buried. There was some talk (so Mrs Medlicott said) about taking the body up, and bringing him to Hanbury. But his executors, – connections on the Ludlow side, – demurred to this. If he were removed to England, he must be carried on to Scotland, and interred with his Monkshaven forefathers. My lady, deeply hurt, withdrew from the discussion, before it degenerated to an unseemly contest. But all the more, for this understood mortification of my lady’s, did the whole village and estate of Hanbury assume every outward sign of mourning. The church bells tolled morning and evening. The church itself was draped in black inside. Hatchments were placed everywhere, where hatchments could be put. All the tenantry spoke in hushed voices for more than a week, scarcely daring to observe that all flesh, even that of an Earl Ludlow, and the last of the Hanburys, was but grass after all. The very Fighting Lion closed its front door, front shutters it had none, and those who needed drink stole in at the back, and were silent and maudlin over their cups, instead of riotous and noisy. Miss Galindo’s eyes were swollen up with crying, and she told me, with a fresh burst of tears, that even humpbacked Sally had been found sobbing over her Bible, and using a pocket handkerchief for the first time in her life; her aprons having hitherto stood her in the necessary stead, but not being sufficiently in accordance with etiquette to be used when mourning over an earl’s premature decease.

      If it was this way out of the Hall, “you might work it by the rule of three,” as Miss Galindo used to say, and judge what it was in the Hall. We none of us spoke but in a whisper: we tried not to eat; and indeed the shock had been so really great, and we did really care so much for my lady, that for some days we had but little appetite. But after that, I fear our sympathy grew weaker, while our flesh grew stronger. But we still spoke low, and our hearts ached whenever we thought of my lady sitting there alone in the darkened room, with the light ever falling on that one solemn page.

      We wished, O how I wished that she would see Mr Gray! But Adams said, she thought my lady ought to have a bishop come to see her. Still no one had authority enough to send for one.

      Mr Horner all this time was suffering as much as any one. He was too faithful a servant of the great Hanbury family, though now the family had dwindled down to a fragile old lady, not to mourn acutely over its probable extinction. He had, besides, a deeper sympathy and reverence with, and for, my lady, in all things, than probably he ever cared to show, for his manners were always measured and cold. He suffered from sorrow. He also suffered from wrong. My lord’s executors kept writing to him continually. My lady refused to listen to mere business, saying she intrusted all to him. But the “all” was more complicated than I ever thoroughly understood. As far

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