Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
‘They’re out yonder – agait wi’ them things o’ Measter Holdsworth’s.’
So ‘out yonder’ I went; out on to a broad upland common, full of red sand-banks, and sweeps and hollows; bordered by dark firs, purple in the coming shadows, but near at hand all ablaze with flowering gorse, or, as we call it in the south, furze-bushes, which, seen against the belt of distant trees, appeared brilliantly golden. On this heath, a little way from the field-gate, I saw the three. I counted their heads, joined together in an eager group over Holdsworth’s theodolite. He was teaching the minister the practical art of surveying and taking a level. I was wanted to assist, and was quickly set to work to hold the chain. Phillis was as intent as her father; she had hardly time to greet me, so desirous was she to hear some answer to her father’s question.
So we went on, the dark clouds still gathering, for perhaps five minutes after my arrival. Then came the blinding lightning and the rumble and quick-following peal of thunder right over our heads. It came sooner than I expected, sooner than they had looked for: the rain delayed not; it came pouring down; and what were we to do for shelter? Phillis had nothing on but her indoor things – no bonnet, no shawl. Quick as the darting lightning around us, Holdsworth took off his coat and wrapped it round her neck and shoulders, and almost without a word, hurried us all into such poor shelter as one of the overhanging sand-banks could give. There we were, cowered down, close together, Phillis innermost, almost too tightly packed to free her arms enough to divest herself of the coat, which she, in her turn, tried to put lightly over Holdsworth’s shoulders. In doing so she touched his shirt.
‘Oh, how wet you are!’ she cried, in pitying dismay; ‘and you’ve hardly got over your fever! Oh, Mr Holds-worth, I am so sorry!’ He turned his head a little, smiling at her.
‘If I do catch cold, it is all my fault for having deluded you into staying out here!’ but she only murmured again, ‘I am so sorry.’
The minister spoke now. ‘It is a regular downpour. Please God that the hay is saved! But there is no likelihood of its ceasing, and I had better go home at once, and send you all some wraps; umbrellas will not be safe with yonder thunder and lightning.’
Both Holdsworth and I offered to go instead of him; but he was resolved, although perhaps it would have been wiser if Holdsworth, wet as he already was, had kept himself in exercise. As he moved off, Phillis crept out, and could see on to the storm-swept heath. Part of Holdsworth’s apparatus still remained exposed to all the rain. Before we could have any warning, she had rushed out of the shelter and collected the various things, and brought them back in triumph to where we crouched. Holdsworth had stood up, uncertain whether to go to her assistance or not. She came running back, her long lovely hair floating and dripping, her eyes glad and bright, and her colour freshened to a glow of health by the exercise and the rain.
‘Now, Miss Holman, that’s what I call wilful,’ said Holdsworth, as she gave them to him. ‘No, I won’t thank you’ (his looks were thanking her all the time). ‘My little bit of dampness annoyed you, because you thought I had got wet in your service; so you were determined to make me as uncomfortable as you were yourself. It was an unchristian piece of revenge!’
His tone of badinage (as the French call it) would have been palpable enough to any one accustomed to the world; but Phillis was not, and it distressed or rather bewildered her. ‘Unchristian’ had to her a very serious meaning; it was not a word to be used lightly; and though she did not exactly understand what wrong it was that she was accused of doing, she was evidently desirous to throw off the imputation. At first her earnestness to disclaim unkind motives amused Holdsworth; while his light continuance of the joke perplexed her still more; but at last he said something gravely, and in too low a tone for me to hear, which made her all at once become silent, and called out her blushes. After a while, the minister came back, a moving mass of shawls, cloaks, and umbrellas. Phillis kept very close to her father’s side on our return to the farm. She appeared to me to be shrinking away from Holdsworth, while he had not the slightest variation in his manner from what it usually was in his graver moods; kind, protecting, and thoughtful towards her. Of course, there was a great commotion about our wet clothes; but I name the little events of that evening now because I wondered at the time what he had said in that low voice to silence Phillis so effectually, and because, in thinking of their intercourse by the light of future events, that evening stands out with some prominence.
I have said that after our removal to Hornby our communications with the farm became almost of daily occurrence. Cousin Holman and I were the two who had least to do with this intimacy. After Mr Holdsworth regained his health, he too often talked above her head in intellectual matters, and too often in his light bantering tone for her to feel quite at her ease with him. I really believe that he adopted this latter tone in speaking to her because he did not know what to talk about to a purely motherly woman, whose intellect had never been cultivated, and whose loving heart was entirely occupied with her husband, her child, her household affairs, and, perhaps, a little with the concerns of the members of her husband’s congregation, because they, in a way, belonged to her husband. I had noticed before that she had fleeting shadows of jealousy even of Phillis, when her daughter and her husband appeared to have strong interests and sympathies in things which were quite beyond her comprehension. I had noticed it in my first acquaintance with them, I say, and had admired the delicate tact which made the minister, on such occasions, bring the conversation back to such subjects as those on which his wife, with her practical experience of every-day life, was an authority; while Phillis, devoted to her father, unconsciously followed his lead, totally unaware, in her filial reverence, of his motive for doing so.
To return to Holdsworth. The minister had at more than one time spoken of him to me with slight distrust, principally occasioned by the suspicion that his careless words were not always those of soberness and truth. But it was more as a protest against the fascination which the younger man evidently exercised over the elder one – more as it were to strengthen himself against yielding to this fascination – that the minister spoke out to me about this failing of Holdsworth’s, as it appeared to him. In return Holdsworth was subdued by the minister’s uprightness and goodness, and delighted with his clear intellect – his strong healthy craving after further knowledge. I never met two men who took more thorough pleasure and relish in each other’s society. To Phillis his relation continued that of an elder brother: he directed her studies into new paths, he patiently drew out the expression of many of her thoughts, and perplexities, and unformed theories – scarcely even now falling into the vein of banter which she was slow to understand.
One day – harvest-time – he had been drawing on a loose piece of paper – sketching ears of corn, sketching carts drawn by bullocks and laden with grapes – all the time talking with Phillis and me, cousin Holman putting in her not pertinent remarks, when suddenly he said to Phillis, –
‘Keep your head still; I see a sketch! I have often tried to draw your head from memory, and failed; but I think I can do it now. If I succeed I will give it to your mother. You would like a portrait of your daughter as Ceres, would you not, ma’am?’
‘I should like a picture of her; yes, very much, thank you, Mr Holdsworth, but if you put that straw in her hair,’ (he was holding some wheat ears above her passive head, looking at the effect with an artistic eye,) ‘you’ll ruffle her hair. Phillis, my dear, if you’re to have your picture taken, go upstairs, and brush your hair smooth.’
‘Not on any account. I beg your pardon, but I want hair loosely flowing.’
He began to draw, looking intently at Phillis; I could see this stare of his discomposed her – her colour came and went, her breath quickened with the consciousness of his regard; at last, when he said, ‘Please look at me for a minute or two, I want to get in the eyes,’ she looked up at him, quivered, and suddenly got up and left the room. He did not say a word,
‘What’s the matter? Where is she gone?’ Holdsworth never uttered a word, but went on drawing. I felt obliged to say something; it was stupid enough, but stupidity was better than silence just then.
‘I’ll go and call her,’ said I. So I went into the hall, and to the bottom of the stairs; but just as I was going to call Phillis, she came down swiftly with her bonnet on, and saying, ‘I’m going to father in the five-acre,’ passed out by the open ‘rector,’ right in front of the house-place windows, and out at the little white sidegate. She had been seen by her mother and Holdsworth, as she passed; so there was no need for explanation, only cousin Holman and I had a long discussion as to whether she could have found the room too hot, or what had occasioned her sudden departure. Holdsworth was very quiet during all the rest of that day; nor did he resume the portrait-taking by his own desire, only at my cousin Holman’s request the next time that he came; and then he said he should not require any more formal sittings for only such a slight sketch as he felt himself capable of making. Phillis was just the same as ever the next time I saw her after her abrupt passing me in the hall. She never gave any explanation of her rush out of the room.
So all things went on, at least as far as my observation reached at the time, or memory can recall now, till the great apple-gathering of the year. The nights were frosty, the mornings and evenings were misty, but at mid-day all was sunny and bright, and it was one mid-day that both of us being on the line near Heathbridge, and knowing that they were gathering apples at the farm, we resolved to spend the men’s dinner-hour in going over there. We found the great clothes-baskets full of apples, scenting the house, and stopping up the way; and an universal air of merry contentment with this the final produce of the year. The yellow leaves hung on the trees ready to flutter down at the slightest puff of air; the great bushes of Michaelmas daisies in the kitchen-garden were making their last show of flowers. We must needs taste the fruit off the different trees, and pass our judgment as to their flavour; and we went away with our pockets stuffed with those that we liked best. As we had passed to the orchard, Holdsworth had admired and spoken about some flower which he saw; it so happened he had never seen this old-fashioned kind since the days of his boyhood. I do not know whether he had thought anything more about this chance speech of his, but I know I had not – when Phillis, who had been missing just at the last moment of our hurried visit, re-appeared with a little nosegay of this same flower, which she was tying up with a blade of grass. She offered it to Holds-worth as he stood with her father on the point of departure. I saw their faces. I saw for the first time an unmistakable look of love in his black eyes; it was more than gratitude for the little attention; it was tender and beseeching – passionate. She shrank from it in confusion, her glance fell on me; and, partly to hide her emotion, partly out of real kindness at what might appear ungracious neglect of an older friend, she flew off to gather me a few late-blooming China roses. But it was the first time she had ever done anything of the kind for me.
We had to walk fast to be back on the line before the men’s return, so we spoke but little to each other, and of course the afternoon was too much occupied for us to have any talk. In the evening we went back to our joint lodgings in Hornby. There, on the table, lay a letter for Holdsworth, which had been forwarded to him from Eltham. As our tea was ready, and I had had nothing to eat since morning, I fell to directly without paying much attention to my companion as he opened and read his letter. He was very silent for a few minutes; at length he said, –
‘Old fellow! I’m going to leave you!’
‘Leave me!’ said I. ‘How? When?’
‘This letter ought to have come to hand sooner. It is from Greathed the engineer’ (Greathed was well known in those days; he is dead now, and his name half-forgotten); ‘he wants to see me about some business; in fact, I may as well tell you, Paul, this letter contains a very advantageous proposal for me to go out to Canada, and superintend the making of a line there.’
I was in utter dismay.
‘But what will our company say to that?’
‘Oh, Greathed has the superintendence of this line, you know; and he is going to be engineer in chief to this Canadian line; many of the shareholders in this company are going in for the other, so I fancy they will make no difficulty in following Greathed’s lead. He says he has a young man ready to put in my place.’
‘I hate him,’ said I.
‘Thank you,’ said Holdsworth, laughing.
‘But you must not,’ he resumed; ‘for this is a very good thing for me, and, of course, if no one can be found to take my inferior work, I can’t be spared to take the superior. I only wish I had received this letter a day sooner. Every hour is of consequence, for Greathed says they are threatening a rival line. Do you know, Paul, I almost fancy I must go up to-night? I can take an engine back to Eltham, and catch the night train. I should not like Greathed to think me lukewarm.’
‘But you’ll come back?’ I asked, distressed at the thought of this sudden parting.
‘Oh, yes! At least I hope so. They may want me to go out by the next steamer, that will be on Saturday.’ He began to eat and drink standing, but I think he was quite unconscious of the nature of either his food or his drink.
‘I will go to-night. Activity and readiness go a long way in our profession. Remember that, my boy! I hope I shall come back, but if I don’t, be sure and recollect all the words of wisdom that have fallen from my lips. Now where’s the portmanteau? If I can gain half an hour for a gathering up of my things in Eltham, so much the better. I’m clear of debt anyhow; and what I owe for my lodgings you can pay for me out of my quarter’s salary, due November 4th.’
‘Then you don’t think you will come back?’ I said, despondingly.
‘I will come back some time, never fear,’ said he, kindly. ‘I may be back in a couple of days, having been found incompetent for the Canadian work; or I may not be wanted to go out so soon as I now anticipate. Anyhow you don’t suppose I am going to forget you, Paul – this work out there ought not to take me above two years, and, perhaps, after that, we may be employed together again.’
Perhaps! I had very little hope. The same kind of happy days never returns. However, I did all I could in helping him: clothes, papers, books, instruments; how we pushed and struggled – how I stuffed. All was done in a much shorter time than we had calculated upon, when I had run down to the sheds to order the engine. I was going to drive him to Eltham. We sat ready for a summons. Holdsworth took up the little nosegay that he had brought away from the Hope Farm, and had laid on the mantelpiece on first coming into the room. He smelt at it, and caressed it with his lips.
‘What grieves me is that I did not know – that I have not said good-by to – to them.’
He spoke in a grave tone, the shadow of the coming separation falling upon him at last.
‘I will tell them,’ said I. ‘I am sure they will be very sorry.’ Then we were silent.
‘I never liked any family so much.’
‘I knew you would like them.’
‘How one’s thoughts change, – this morning I was full of a hope, Paul.’ He paused, and then he said, –
‘You put that sketch in carefully?’
‘That outline of a head?’ asked I. But I knew he meant an abortive sketch of Phillis, which had not been successful enough for him to complete it with shading or colouring.
‘Yes. What a sweet innocent face it is! and yet so – Oh, dear!’
He sighed and got up, his hands in his pockets, to walk up and down the room in evident disturbance of mind. He suddenly stopped opposite to me.
‘You’ll tell them how it all was. Be sure and tell the good minister that I was so sorry not to wish him good-by, and to thank him and his wife for all their kindness. As for Phillis, – please Go
‘You love Phillis, then?’ said I.
‘Love her! – Yes, that I do. Who could help it, seeing her as I have done? Her character as unusual and rare as her beauty! God bless her! God keep her in her high tranquillity, her pure innocence. – Two years! It is a long time. – But she lives in such seclusion, almost like the sleeping beauty, Paul,’ – (he was smiling now, though a minute before I had thought him on the verge of tears,) – ‘but I shall come back like a prince from Canada, and waken her to my love. I can’t help hoping that it won’t be difficult, eh, Paul?’
This touch of coxcombry displeased me a little, and I made no answer. He went on, half apologetically, –
‘You see, the salary they offer me is large; and beside that, this experience will give me a name which will entitle me to expect a still larger in any future undertaking.’
‘That won’t influence Phillis.’
‘No! but it will make me more eligible in the eyes of her father and mother.’
I made no answer.
‘You give me your best wishes, Paul,’ said he, almost pleading. ‘You would like me for a cousin?’
I heard the scream and whistle of the engine ready down at the sheds.