Lizzie Leigh

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LIZZIE LEIGH
by Elizabeth Gaskell


CHAPTER I.


When Death is present in a household on a Christmas Day, the very
contrast between the time as it now is, and the day as it has often been,
gives a poignancy to sorrow--a more utter blankness to the desolation.
James Leigh died just as the far-away bells of Rochdale Church were
ringing for morning service on Christmas Day, 1836. A few minutes before
his death, he opened his already glazing eyes, and made a sign to his
wife, by the faint motion of his lips, that he had yet something to say.
She stooped close down, and caught the broken whisper, "I forgive her,
Annie! May God forgive me!"

"Oh, my love, my dear! only get well, and I will never cease showing my
thanks for those words. May God in heaven bless thee for saying them.
Thou'rt not so restless, my lad! may be--Oh, God!"

For even while she spoke he died.

They had been two-and-twenty years man and wife; for nineteen of those
years their life had been as calm and happy as the most perfect
uprightness on the one side, and the most complete confidence and loving
submission on the other, could make it. Milton's famous line might have
been framed and hung up as the rule of their married life, for he was
truly the interpreter, who stood between God and her; she would have
considered herself wicked if she had ever dared even to think him
austere, though as certainly as he was an upright man, so surely was he
hard, stern, and inflexible. But for three years the moan and the murmur
had never been out of her heart; she had rebelled against her husband as
against a tyrant, with a hidden, sullen rebellion, which tore up the old
landmarks of wifely duty and affection, and poisoned the fountains whence
gentlest love and reverence had once been for ever springing.

But those last blessed words replaced him on his throne in her heart, and
called out penitent anguish for all the bitter estrangement of later
years. It was this which made her refuse all the entreaties of her sons,
that she would see the kind-hearted neighbours, who called on their way
from church, to sympathize and condole. No! she would stay with the dead
husband that had spoken tenderly at last, if for three years he had kept
silence; who knew but what, if she had only been more gentle and less
angrily reserved he might have relented earlier--and in time?

She sat rocking herself to and fro by the side of the bed, while the
footsteps below went in and out; she had been in sorrow too long to have
any violent burst of deep grief now; the furrows were well worn in her
cheeks, and the tears flowed quietly, if incessantly, all the day long.
But when the winter's night drew on, and the neighbours had gone away to
their homes, she stole to the window, and gazed out, long and wistfully,
over the dark grey moors. She did not hear her son's voice, as he spoke
to her from the door, nor his footstep as he drew nearer. She started
when he touched her.

"Mother! come down to us. There's no one but Will and me. Dearest
mother, we do so want you." The poor lad's voice trembled, and he began
to cry. It appeared to require an effort on Mrs. Leigh's part to tear
herself away from the window, but with a sigh she complied with his
request.

The two boys (for though Will was nearly twenty-one, she still thought of
him as a lad) had done everything in their power to make the house-place
comfortable for her. She herself, in the old days before her sorrow, had
never made a brighter fire or a cleaner hearth, ready for her husband's
return home, than now awaited her. The tea-things were all put out, and
the kettle was boiling; and the boys had calmed their grief down into a
kind of sober cheerfulness. They paid her every attention they could
think of, but received little notice on her part; she did not resist, she
rather submitted to all their arrangements; but they did not seem to
touch her heart.

When tea was ended--it was merely the form of tea that had been gone
through--Will moved the things away to the dresser. His mother leant
back languidly in her chair.

"Mother, shall Tom read you a chapter? He's a better scholar than I."

"Ay, lad!" said she, almost eagerly. "That's it. Read me the Prodigal
Son. Ay, ay, lad. Thank thee."

Tom found the chapter, and read it in the high-pitched voice which is
customary in village schools. His mother bent forward, her lips parted,
her eyes dilated; her whole body instinct with eager attention. Will sat
with his head depressed and hung down. He knew why that chapter had been
chosen; and to him it recalled the family's disgrace. When the reading
was ended, he still hung down his head in gloomy silence. But her face
was brighter than it had been before for the day. Her eyes looked
dreamy, as if she saw a vision; and by-and-by she pulled the Bible
towards her, and, putting her finger underneath each word, began to read
them aloud in a low voice to herself; she read again the words of bitter
sorrow and deep humiliation; but most of all, she paused and brightened
over the father's tender reception of the repentant prodigal.

So passed the Christmas evening in the Upclose Farm.

The snow had fallen heavily over the dark waving moorland before the day
of the funeral. The black storm-laden dome of heaven lay very still and
close upon the white earth, as they carried the body forth out of the
house which had known his presence so long as its ruling power. Two and
two the mourners followed, making a black procession, in their winding
march over the unbeaten snow, to Milne Row Church; now lost in some
hollow of the bleak moors, now slowly climbing the heaving ascents. There
was no long tarrying after the funeral, for many of the neighbours who
accompanied the body to the grave had far to go, and the great white
flakes which came slowly down were the boding forerunners of a heavy
storm. One old friend alone accompanied the widow and her sons to their
home.

The Upclose Farm had belonged for generations to the Leighs; and yet its
possession hardly raised them above the rank of labourers. There was the
house and out-buildings, all of an old-fashioned kind, and about seven
acres of barren unproductive land, which they had never possessed capital
enough to improve; indeed, they could hardly rely upon it for
subsistence; and it had been customary to bring up the sons to some
trade, such as a wheelwright's or blacksmith's.

James Leigh had left a will in the possession of the old man who
accompanied them home. He read it aloud. James had bequeathed the farm
to his faithful wife, Anne Leigh, for her lifetime, and afterwards to his
son William. The hundred and odd pounds in the savings bank was to
accumulate for Thomas.

After the reading was ended, Anne Leigh sat silent for a time and then
she asked to speak to Samuel Orme alone. The sons went into the back
kitchen, and thence strolled out into the fields regardless of the
driving snow. The brothers were dearly fond of each other, although they
were very different in character. Will, the elder, was like his father,
stern, reserved, and scrupulously upright. Tom (who was ten years
younger) was gentle and delicate as a girl, both in appearance and
character. He had always clung to his mother and dreaded his father.
They did not speak as they walked, for they were only in the habit of
talking about facts, and hardly knew the more sophisticated language
applied to the description of feelings.

Meanwhile their mother had taken hold of Samuel Orme's arm with her
trembling hand.

"Samuel, I must let the farm--I must."

"Let the farm! What's come o'er the woman?"

"Oh, Samuel!" said she, her eyes swimming in tears, "I'm just fain to go
and live in Manchester. I mun let the farm."

Samuel looked, and pondered, but did not speak for some time. At last he
said--

"If thou hast made up thy mind, there's no speaking again it; and thou
must e'en go. Thou'lt be sadly pottered wi' Manchester ways; but that's
not my look out. Why, thou'lt have to buy potatoes, a thing thou hast
never done afore in all thy born life. Well! it's not my look out. It's
rather for me than again me. Our Jenny is going to be married to Tom
Higginbotham, and he was speaking of wanting a bit of land to begin upon.
His father will be dying sometime, I reckon, and then he'll step into the
Croft Farm. But meanwhile--"

"Then, thou'lt let the farm," said she, still as eagerly as ever.

"Ay, ay, he'll take it fast enough, I've a notion. But I'll not drive a
bargain with thee just now; it would not be right; we'll wait a bit."

"No; I cannot wait; settle it out at once."

"Well, well; I'll speak to Will about it. I see him out yonder. I'll
step to him and talk it over."

Accordingly he went and joined the two lads, and, without more ado, began
the subject to them.

"Will, thy mother is fain to go live in Manchester, and covets to let the
farm. Now, I'm willing to take it for Tom Higginbotham; but I like to
drive a keen bargain, and there would be no fun chaffering with thy
mother just now. Let thee and me buckle to, my lad! and try and cheat
each other; it will warm us this cold day."

"Let the farm!" said both the lads at once, with infinite surprise. "Go
live in Manchester!"

When Samuel Orme found that the plan had never before been named to
either Will or Tom, he would have nothing to do with it, he said, until
they had spoken to their mother. Likely she was "dazed" by her husband's
death; he would wait a day or two, and not name it to any one; not to Tom
Higginbotham himself, or may be he would set his heart upon it. The lads
had better go in and talk it over with their mother. He bade them good-
day, and left them.

Will looked very gloomy, but he did not speak till they got near the
house. Then he said--

"Tom, go to th' shippon, and supper the cows. I want to speak to mother
alone."

When he entered the house-place, she was sitting before the fire, looking
into its embers. She did not hear him come in: for some time she had
lost her quick perception of outward things.

"Mother! what's this about going to Manchester?" asked he.

"Oh, lad!" said she, turning round, and speaking in a beseeching tone, "I
must go and seek our Lizzie. I cannot rest here for thinking on her.
Many's the time I've left thy father sleeping in bed, and stole to th'
window, and looked and looked my heart out towards Manchester, till I
thought I must just set out and tramp over moor and moss straight away
till I got there, and then lift up every downcast face till I came to our
Lizzie. And often, when the south wind was blowing soft among the
hollows, I've fancied (it could but be fancy, thou knowest) I heard her
crying upon me; and I've thought the voice came closer and closer, till
at last it was sobbing out, 'Mother!' close to the door; and I've stolen
down, and undone the latch before now, and looked out into the still,
black night, thinking to see her--and turned sick and sorrowful when I
heard no living sound but the sough of the wind dying away. Oh, speak
not to me of stopping here, when she may be perishing for hunger, like
the poor lad in the parable." And now she lifted up her voice, and wept
aloud.

Will was deeply grieved. He had been old enough to be told the family
shame when, more than two years before, his father had had his letter to
his daughter returned by her mistress in Manchester, telling him that
Lizzie had left her service some time--and why. He had sympathized with
his father's stern anger; though he had thought him something hard, it is
true, when he had forbidden his weeping, heart-broken wife to go and try
to find her poor sinning child, and declared that henceforth they would
have no daughter; that she should be as one dead, and her name never more
be named at market or at meal time, in blessing or in prayer. He had
held his peace, with compressed lips and contracted brow, when the
neighbours had noticed to him how poor Lizzie's death had aged both his
father and his mother; and how they thought the bereaved couple would
never hold up their heads again. He himself had felt as if that one
event had made him old before his time; and had envied Tom the tears he
had shed over poor, pretty, innocent, dead Lizzie. He thought about her
sometimes, till he ground his teeth together, and could have struck her
down in her shame. His mother had never named her to him until now.

"Mother!" said he, at last. "She may be dead. Most likely she is"

"No, Will; she is not dead," said Mrs. Leigh. "God will not let her die
till I've seen her once again. Thou dost not know how I've prayed and
prayed just once again to see her sweet face, and tell her I've forgiven
her, though she's broken my heart--she has, Will." She could not go on
for a minute or two for the choking sobs. "Thou dost not know that, or
thou wouldst not say she could be dead--for God is very merciful, Will;
He is: He is much more pitiful than man. I could never ha' spoken to thy
father as I did to Him--and yet thy father forgave her at last. The last
words he said were that he forgave her. Thou'lt not be harder than thy
father, Will? Do not try and hinder me going to seek her, for it's no
use."

Will sat very still for a long time before he spoke. At last he said,
"I'll not hinder you. I think she's dead, but that's no matter."

"She's not dead," said her mother, with low earnestness. Will took no
notice of the interruption.

"We will all go to Manchester for a twelvemonth, and let the farm to Tom
Higginbotham. I'll get blacksmith's work; and Tom can have good
schooling for awhile, which he's always craving for. At the end of the
year you'll come back, mother, and give over fretting for Lizzie, and
think with me that she is dead--and, to my mind, that would be more
comfort than to think of her living;" he dropped his voice as he spoke
these last words. She shook her head but made no answer. He asked
again--"Will you, mother, agree to this?"

"I'll agree to it a-this-ns," said she. "If I hear and see nought of her
for a twelvemonth, me being in Manchester looking out, I'll just ha'
broken my heart fairly before the year's ended, and then I shall know
neither love nor sorrow for her any more, when I'm at rest in my grave.
I'll agree to that, Will."

"Well, I suppose it must be so. I shall not tell Tom, mother, why we're
flitting to Manchester. Best spare him."

"As thou wilt," said she, sadly, "so that we go, that's all."

Before the wild daffodils were in flower in the sheltered copses round
Upclose Farm, the Leighs were settled in their Manchester home; if they
could ever grow to consider that place as a home, where there was no
garden or outbuilding, no fresh breezy outlet, no far-stretching view,
over moor and hollow; no dumb animals to be tended, and, what more than
all they missed, no old haunting memories, even though those remembrances
told of sorrow, and the dead and gone.

Mrs. Leigh heeded the loss of all these things less than her sons. She
had more spirit in her countenance than she had had for months, because
now she had hope; of a sad enough kind, to be sure, but still it was
hope. She performed all her household duties, strange and complicated as
they were, and bewildered as she was with all the town necessities of her
new manner of life; but when her house was "sided," and the boys come
home from their work in the evening, she would put on her things and
steal out, unnoticed, as she thought, but not without many a heavy sigh
from Will, after she had closed the house-door and departed. It was
often past midnight before she came back, pale and weary, with almost a
guilty look upon her face; but that face so full of disappointment and
hope deferred, that Will had never the heart to say what he thought of
the folly and hopelessness of the search. Night after night it was
renewed, till days grew to weeks, and weeks to months. All this time
Will did his duty towards her as well as he could, without having
sympathy with her. He stayed at home in the evenings for Tom's sake, and
often wished he had Tom's pleasure in reading, for the time hung heavy on
his hands as he sat up for his mother.

I need not tell you how the mother spent the weary hours. And yet I will
tell you something. She used to wander out, at first as if without a
purpose, till she rallied her thoughts, and brought all her energies to
bear on the one point; then she went with earnest patience along the
least-known ways to some new part of the town, looking wistfully with
dumb entreaty into people's faces; sometimes catching a glimpse of a
figure which had a kind of momentary likeness to her child's, and
following that figure with never-wearying perseverance, till some light
from shop or lamp showed the cold strange face which was not her
daughter's. Once or twice a kind-hearted passer-by, struck by her look
of yearning woe, turned back and offered help, or asked her what she
wanted. When so spoken to, she answered only, "You don't know a poor
girl they call Lizzie Leigh, do you?" and when they denied all knowledge,
she shook her head, and went on again. I think they believed her to be
crazy. But she never spoke first to any one. She sometimes took a few
minutes' rest on the door-steps, and sometimes (very seldom) covered her
face and cried; but she could not afford to lose time and chances in this
way; while her eyes were blinded with tears, the lost one might pass by
unseen.

One evening, in the rich time of shortening autumn-days, Will saw an old
man, who, without being absolutely drunk, could not guide himself rightly
along the foot-path, and was mocked for his unsteadiness of gait by the
idle boys of the neighbourhood. For his father's sake, Will regarded old
age with tenderness, even when most degraded and removed from the stern
virtues which dignified that father; so he took the old man home, and
seemed to believe his often-repeated assertions, that he drank nothing
but water. The stranger tried to stiffen himself up into steadiness as
he drew nearer home, as if there some one there for whose respect he
cared even in his half-intoxicated state, or whose feelings he feared to
grieve. His home was exquisitely clean and neat, even in outside
appearance; threshold, window, and windowsill were outward signs of some
spirit of purity within. Will was rewarded for his attention by a bright
glance of thanks, succeeded by a blush of shame, from a young woman of
twenty or thereabouts. She did not speak or second her father's
hospitable invitations to him to be seated. She seemed unwilling that a
stranger should witness her father's attempts at stately sobriety, and
Will could not bear to stay and see her distress. But when the old man,
with many a flabby shake of the hand, kept asking him to come again some
other evening, and see them, Will sought her downcast eyes, and, though
he could not read their veiled meaning, he answered, timidly, "If it's
agreeable to everybody, I'll come, and thank ye." But there was no
answer from the girl, to whom this speech was in reality addressed; and
Will left the house, liking her all the better for never speaking.

He thought about her a great deal for the next day or two; he scolded
himself for being so foolish as to think of her, and then fell to with
fresh vigour, and thought of her more than ever. He tried to depreciate
her: he told himself she was not pretty, and then made indignant answer
that he liked her looks much better than any beauty of them all. He
wished he was not so country-looking, so red-faced, so broad-shouldered;
while she was like a lady, with her smooth, colourless complexion, her
bright dark hair, and her spotless dress. Pretty or not pretty she drew
his footsteps towards her; he could not resist the impulse that made him
wish to see her once more, and find out some fault which should unloose
his heart from her unconscious keeping. But there she was, pure and
maidenly as before. He sat and looked, answering her father at cross-
purposes, while she drew more and more into the shadow of the chimney-
corner out of sight. Then the spirit that possessed him (it was not he
himself, sure, that did so impudent a thing!) made him get up and carry
the candle to a different place, under the pretence of giving her more
light at her sewing, but in reality to be able to see her better. She
could not stand this much longer, but jumped up and said she must put her
little niece to bed; and surely there never was, before or since, so
troublesome a child of two years old, for though Will stayed an hour and
a half longer, she never came down again. He won the father's heart,
though, by his capacity as a listener; for some people are not at all
particular, and, so that they themselves may talk on undisturbed, are not
so unreasonable as to expect attention to what they say.

Will did gather this much, however, from the old man's talk. He had once
been quite in a genteel line of business, but had failed for more money
than any greengrocer he had heard of; at least, any who did not mix up
fish and game with green-grocery proper. This grand failure seemed to
have been the event of his life, and one on which he dwelt with a strange
kind of pride. It appeared as if at present he rested from his past
exertions (in the bankrupt line), and depended on his daughter, who kept
a small school for very young children. But all these particulars Will
only remembered and understood when he had left the house; at the time he
heard them, he was thinking of Susan. After he had made good his footing
at Mr. Palmer's, he was not long, you may be sure, without finding some
reason for returning again and again. He listened to her father, he
talked to the little niece, but he looked at Susan, both while he
listened and while he talked. Her father kept on insisting upon his
former gentility, the details of which would have appeared very
questionable to Will's mind, if the sweet, delicate, modest Susan had not
thrown an inexplicable air of refinement over all she came near. She
never spoke much; she was generally diligently at work; but when she
moved it was so noiselessly, and when she did speak, it was in so low and
soft a voice, that silence, speech, motion, and stillness alike seemed to
remove her high above Will's reach into some saintly and inaccessible air
of glory--high above his reach, even as she knew him! And, if she were
made acquainted with the dark secret behind of his sister's shame, which
was kept ever present to his mind by his mother's nightly search among
the outcast and forsaken, would not Susan shrink away from him with
loathing, as if he were tainted by the involuntary relationship? This
was his dread; and thereupon followed a resolution that he would withdraw
from her sweet company before it was too late. So he resisted internal
temptation, and stayed at home, and suffered and sighed. He became angry
with his mother for her untiring patience in seeking for one who he could
not help hoping was dead rather than alive. He spoke sharply to her, and
received only such sad deprecatory answers as made him reproach himself,
and still more lose sight of peace of mind. This struggle could not last
long without affecting his health; and Tom, his sole companion through
the long evenings, noticed his increasing languor, his restless
irritability, with perplexed anxiety, and at last resolved to call his
mother's attention to his brother's haggard, careworn looks. She
listened with a startled recollection of Will's claims upon her love. She
noticed his decreasing appetite and half-checked sighs.

"Will, lad! what's come o'er thee?" said she to him, as he sat listlessly
gazing into the fire.

"There's nought the matter with me," said he, as if annoyed at her
remark.

"Nay, lad, but there is." He did not speak again to contradict her;
indeed, she did not know if he had heard her, so unmoved did he look.

"Wouldst like to go to Upclose Farm?" asked she, sorrowfully.

"It's just blackberrying time," said Tom.

Will shook his head. She looked at him awhile, as if trying to read that
expression of despondency, and trace it back to its source.

"Will and Tom could go," said she; "I must stay here till I've found her,
thou knowest," continued she, dropping her voice.

He turned quickly round, and with the authority he at all times exercised
over Tom, bade him begone to bed.

When Tom had left the room, he prepared to speak.




CHAPTER II.


"Mother," then said Will, "why will you keep on thinking she's alive? If
she were but dead, we need never name her name again. We've never heard
nought on her since father wrote her that letter; we never knew whether
she got it or not. She'd left her place before then. Many a one dies
in--"

"Oh, my lad! dunnot speak so to me, or my heart will break outright,"
said his mother, with a sort of cry. Then she calmed herself, for she
yearned to persuade him to her own belief. "Thou never asked, and
thou'rt too like thy father for me to tell without asking--but it were
all to be near Lizzie's old place that I settled down on this side o'
Manchester; and the very day at after we came, I went to her old missus,
and asked to speak a word wi' her. I had a strong mind to cast it up to
her, that she should ha' sent my poor lass away, without telling on it to
us first; but she were in black, and looked so sad I could na' find in my
heart to threep it up. But I did ask her a bit about our Lizzie. The
master would have turned her away at a day's warning (he's gone to
t'other place; I hope he'll meet wi' more mercy there than he showed our
Lizzie--I do), and when the missus asked her should she write to us, she
says Lizzie shook her head; and when she speered at her again, the poor
lass went down on her knees, and begged her not, for she said it would
break my heart (as it has done, Will--God knows it has)," said the poor
mother, choking with her struggle to keep down her hard overmastering
grief, "and her father would curse her--Oh, God, teach me to be patient."
She could not speak for a few minutes--"and the lass threatened, and said
she'd go drown herself in the canal, if the missus wrote home--and so--