one knows,” said she to herself, “is a vast different to poking a thing through a hole into a box, th’ inside of which one has never clapped eyes on; and yet letters get safe some ways or another.” (This belief in the infallibility of the post was destined a shock before long.) But she had a secret yearning for Benjamin’s thanks, and some of the old words of love that she had been without so long. Nay, she even thought when, day after day, week after week, passed by without a line that he might be winding up his affairs in that weary, wasteful London, and coming back to Nab-end to thank her in person.
One day—her aunt was up-stairs, inspecting the summer’s make of cheeses, her uncle out in the fields—the postman brought a letter into the kitchen to Bessy. A country postman, even now, is not much pressed for time, and in those days there were but few letters to distribute, and they were only sent out from Highminster once a week into the district in which Nab-end was situated; and on those occasions the letter-carrier usually paid morning calls on the various people for whom he had letters. So, half standing by the dresser, half sitting on it, he began to rummage out his bag. “It’s a queer-like thing I’ve got for Nathan this time. I am afraid it will bear ill news in it, for there’s ‘Dead Letter Office’ stamped on the top of it.”
“Lord save us!” said Bessy, and sat down on the nearest chair, as white as a sheet. In an instant, however, she was up, and, snatching the ominous letter out of the man’s hands, she pushed him before her out of the house, and said, “Be off wi’ thee, afore aunt comes down;” and ran past him as hard as she could till she reached the field where she expected to find her uncle.
“Uncle,” said she, breathless, “what is it? Oh, uncle, speak! Is he dead?”
Nathan’s hands trembled, and his eyes dazzled, “Take it,” he said, “and tell me what it is.”
“It’s a letter—it’s from you to Benjamin, it is and there’s words printed with it, ‘Not known at the address given;’ so they’ve sent it back to the writer that’s you, uncle. Oh, it gave me such a start, with them nasty words printed outside!”
Nathan had taken the letter back into his own hands, and was turning it over, while he strove to understand what the quick-witted Bessy had picked up at a glance. But he arrived at a different conclusion.
“He’s dead?” said he. “The lad is dead, and he never knowed how as I were sorry I wrote to ’un so sharp. My lad! my lad!” Nathan sat down on the ground where he stood, and covered his face with his old, withered hands. The letter returned to him was one which he had written with infinite pains and at various times, to tell his child, in kinder words and at greater length than he had done before, the reasons why he could not send him the money demanded. And now Benjamin was dead; nay, the old man immediately jumped to the conclusion that his child had been starved to death, without money, in a wild, wide, strange place. All he could say at first was: “My heart, Bess my heart is broken!” And he put his hand to his side, still keeping his shut eyes covered with the other, as though he never wished to see the light of day again. Bessy was down by his side in an instant, holding him in her arms, chafing and kissing him.
“It’s noan so bad, uncle; he’s not dead; the letter does not say that, dunnot think it. He’s flitted from that lodging, and the lazy tyke dunna know where to find him; and so, they just send y’ back th’ letter, instead of taring fra’ house” to house, as Mark Benson would. I’ve always heerd tell on south country folk for laziness. He’s noan dead, uncle; he’s just flitted, and he’ll let us know afore long where he’s getten to. Mebby it’s a cheaper place, for that lawyer has cheated him, ye recklet, and he’ll be trying to live for as little as can, that’s all, uncle. Dunnot take on so, for it doesna say he’s dead.” By this time, Bessy was crying with agitation, although she firmly believed in her own view of the case, and had felt the opening of the ill-favoured letter as a great relief. Presently she began to urge both with word and action upon her uncle, that he should sit no longer on the damp grass. She pulled him up, for he was very stiff, and, as he said, “all shaken to dithers.” She made him walk about, repeating over and over again her solution of the case, always in the same words, beginning again and again, “He’s noan dead; it’s just been a flitting,” and so on. Nathan shook his head, and tried to be convinced; but it was a steady belief in his own heart for all that. He looked so deathly ill on his return home with Bessy (for she would not let him go on with his day’s work), that his wife made sure he had taken cold, and he, weary and indifferent to life, was glad to subside into bed and the rest from exertion which his real bodily illness gave him. Neither Bessy nor he spoke of the letter again, even to each other, for many days; and Bessy found means to stop Mark Benson’s tongue, and satisfy his kindly curiosity by giving him the rosy side of her own view of the case.
Nathan got up again an older man in looks and constitution by ten years for that week of bed. His wife gave him many a scolding on his imprudence for sitting down in the wet field, if ever so tired. But now she, too, was beginning to be uneasy at Benjamin’s long-continued silence. She could not write herself, but she urged her husband many a time to send a letter to ask for news of her lad. He said nothing in reply for some time; at length he told her he would write next Sunday afternoon. Sunday was his general time for writing, and this Sunday he meant to go to church for the first time since his illness. On Saturday he was very persistent against his wife’s wishes (backed by Bessy as hard as she could), in resolving to go into Highminster to market. The change would do him good, he said. But he came home tired, and a little mysterious in his ways. When he went to the shippon the last thing at night, he asked Bessy to go with him, and hold the lantern, while he looked at an ailing cow; and, when they were fairly out of the earshot of the house, he pulled out a little shop-parcel, and said to her, “Thou’lt put that on ma Sunday hat, wilt ‘ou lass? It’ll be a bit on a comfort to me; for I know my lad’s dead and gone, though I dunna speak on it for fear o’ grieving th’ old woman and ye.”
“I’ll put it on, uncle, if but he’s noan dead.” (Bessy was sobbing.) “I know I know, lass. I dunnot wish other folk to hold my opinion; but I’d like to wear a bit o’ crape, out o’ respect to my boy. It ’ud have done me good for to have ordered a black coat, but she’d see if I had na’ on my wedding-coat, Sundays, for a’ she’s losing her eyesight, poor old wench! But she’ll ne’er take notice o’ a bit o’ crape. Thou’ll put it on all canny and tidy.”
So Nathan went to church with a strip of crape as narrow as Bessy durst venture to make it round his hat. Such is the contradictoriness of human nature, that, though he was most anxious his wife should not hear of his conviction that their son was dead, he was half hurt that none of the neighbours noticed his sign of mourning so far as to ask him for whom he wore it.
But after a while, when they never heard a word from or about Benjamin, the household wonder as to what had become of him grew so painful and strong, that Nathan no longer kept his idea to himself. Poor Hester, however, rejected it with her whole will, heart, and soul. She could not and would not believe nothing should make her believe that her only child Benjamin had died without some sign of love or farewell to her. No arguments could shake her in this. She believed that if all natural means of communication between her and him had been cut off at the last supreme moment if death had come upon him in an instant, sudden and unexpected her intense love would, she believed, have been supernaturally made conscious of the blank. Nathan at times tried to feel glad that she could still hope to see the lad again; but at other moments he wanted her sympathy in his grief, his self-reproach, his weary wonder as to how and what they had done wrong in the treatment of their son, that he had been such a care and sorrow to his parents. Bessy was convinced, first by her aunt, and then by her uncle—honestly convinced on both sides of the argument; and so, for the time, able to sympathise with each. But she lost her youth in a very few months; she looked set and middle aged long before she ought to have done; and rarely smiled and never sang again.
All sorts of new arrangements were required by the blow which told so miserably upon the energies
