but a dream.
The labourers coming in the dawn of the winter’s day were surprised to see the firelight through the low kitchen window. They knocked, and hearing a moaning answer, they entered, fearing that something had befallen their mistress. For all explanation they got these words:
“It is Michael Hurst. He was belated, and fell down the Raven’s Crag. Where does Eleanor, his wife, live?”
How Michael Hurst got to Yew Nook no one but Susan ever knew. They thought he had dragged himself there, with some sore internal bruise sapping away his minuted life. They could not have believed the superhuman exertion which had first sought him out, and then dragged him hither. Only Susan knew of that.
She gave him into the charge of her servants, and went out and saddled her horse. Where the wind had drifted the snow on one side, and the road was clear and bare, she rode, and rode fast; where the soft, deceitful heaps were massed up, she dismounted and led her steed, plunging in deep, with fierce energy, the pain at her heart urging her onwards with a sharp, digging spur.
The grey, solemn, winter’s noon was more night like than the depth of summer’s night; dim purple brooded the low skies over the white earth, as Susan rode up to what had been Michael Hurst’s abode while living. It was a small farmhouse carelessly kept outside, slatternly tended within. The pretty Nelly Hebthwaite was pretty still; her delicate face had never suffered from any long enduring feeling. If anything, its expression was that of plaintive sorrow; but the soft, light hair had scarcely a tinge of grey; the wood rose tint of complexion yet remained, if not so brilliant as in youth; the straight nose, the small mouth were untouched by time. Susan felt the contrast even at that moment. She knew that her own skin was weather-beaten, furrowed, brown, – that her teeth were gone, and her hair grey and ragged. And yet she was not two years older than Nelly, – she had not been, in youth, when she took account of these things. Nelly stood wondering at the strange enough horsewoman, who stopped and panted at the door, holding her horse’s bridle, and refusing to enter.
“Where is Michael Hurst?” asked Susan, at last.
“Well, I can’t rightly say. He should have been at home last night, but he was off, seeing after a public house to be let at Ulverstone, for our farm does not answer, and we were thinking –”
“He did not come home last night?” said Susan, cutting short the story, and half-affirming, half-questioning, by way of letting in a ray of the awful light before she let it full in, in its consuming wrath.
“No! he’ll be stopping somewhere out Ulverstone ways. I’m sure we’ve need of him at home, for I’ve no one but lile Tommy to help me tend the beasts. Things have not gone well with us, and we don’t keep a servant now. But you’re trembling all over, ma’am. You’d better come in, and take something warm, while your horse rests. That’s the stable door, to your left.”
Susan took her horse there; loosened his girths, and rubbed him down with a wisp of straw. Then she hooked about her for hay; but the place was bare of feed, and smelt damp and unused. She went to the house, thankful for the respite, and got some clap bread, which she mashed up in a pailful of lukewarm water. Every moment was a respite, and yet every moment made her dread the more the task that lay before her. It would be longer than she thought at first. She took the saddle off, and hung about her horse, which seemed, somehow, more like a friend than anything else in the world. She laid her cheek against its neck, and rested there, before returning to the house for the last time.
Eleanor had brought down one of her own gowns, which hung on a chair against the fire, and had made her unknown visitor a cup of hot tea. Susan could hardly bear all these little attentions: they choked her, and yet she was so wet, so weak with fatigue and excitement, that she could neither resist by voice or by action. Two children stood awkwardly about, puzzled at the scene, and even Eleanor began to wish for some explanation of who her strange visitor was.
“You’ve, maybe, heard him speaking of me? I’m called Susan Dixon.”
Nelly coloured, and avoided meeting Susan’s eye.
“I’ve heard other folk speak of you. He never named your name.”
This respect of silence came like balm to Susan: balm not felt or heeded at the time it was applied, but very grateful in its effects for all that.
“He is at my house,” continued Susan, determined not to stop or quaver in the operation – the pain which must be inflicted.
“At your house? Yew Nook?” questioned Eleanor, surprised. “How came he there?” – half jealously. “Did he take shelter from the coming storm? Tell me, – there is something – tell me, woman!”
“He took no shelter. Would to God he had!”
“O! would to God! would to God!” shrieked out Eleanor, learning all from the woful import of those dreary eyes. Her cries thrilled through the house; the children’s piping wailings and passionate cries on “Daddy! Daddy!” pierced into Susan’s very marrow. But she remained as still and tearless as the great round face upon the clock.
At last, in a lull of crying, she said, – not exactly questioning, but as if partly to herself –
“You loved him, then?”
“Loved him! he was my husband! He was the father of three bonny bairns that lie dead in Grasmere churchyard. I wish you’d go, Susan Dixon, and let me weep without your watching me! I wish you’d never come near the place.”
“Alas! alas! it would not have brought him to life. I would have laid down my own to save his. My life has been so very sad! No one would have cared if I had died. Alas! alas!”
The tone in which she said this was so utterly mournful and despairing that it awed Nelly into quiet for a time. But by-and-by she said, “I would not turn a dog out to do it harm; but the night is clear, and Tommy shall guide you to the Red Cow. But, oh, I want to be alone! If you’ll come back tomorrow, I’ll be better, and I’ll hear all, and thank you for every kindness you have shown him, – and I do believe you’ve showed him kindness, – though I don’t know why.”
Susan moved heavily and strangely.
She said something – her words came thick and unintelligible. She had had a paralytic stroke since she had last spoken. She could not go, even if she would. Nor did Eleanor, when she became aware of the state of the case, wish her to leave. She had her laid on her own bed, and weeping silently all the while for her lost husband, she nursed Susan like a sister. She did not know what her guest’s worldly position might be; and she might never be repaid. But she sold many a little trifle to purchase such small comforts as Susan needed. Susan, lying still and motionless, learnt much. It was not a severe stroke; it might be the forerunner of others yet to come, but at some distance of time. But for the present she recovered, and regained much of her former health. On her sickbed she matured her plans. When she returned to Yew Nook, she took Michael Hurst’s widow and children with her to live there, and fill up the haunted hearth with living forms that should banish the ghosts.
And so it fell out that the latter days of Susan Dixon’s life were better than the former.
* * * * *
When this narrative was finished, Mrs Dawson called on our two gentlemen, Signor Sperano and Mr Preston, and told them that they had hitherto been amused or interested, but that it was now their turn to amuse or interest. They looked at each other as if this application of hers took them by surprise, and seemed altogether as much abashed as well grown men can ever
