When once that little precious store of his mother’s was discovered, it was well for Bessy’s peace of mind that she did not know how loosely her aunt counted up the coins, mistaking guineas for shillings, or just the other way, so that the amount was seldom the same in the old black spoutless teapot. Yet this son, this hope, this love, had yet a strange power of fascination over the household. The evening before he left, he sat between his parents, a hand in theirs on either side, and Bessy on the old creepie-stool, her head lying on her aunt’s knee, and looking up at him from time to time, as if to learn his face off by heart; till his glances meeting hers, made her drop her eyes, and only sigh.
He stopped up late that night with his father, long after the women had gone to bed. But not to sleep; for I will answer for it the grey-haired mother never slept a wink till the late dawn of the autumn day, and Bessy heard her uncle come up-stairs with heavy, deliberate foot-steps, and go to the old stocking which served him for bank; and count out golden guineas—once he stopped, but again he went on afresh, as if resolved to crown his gift with liberality. Another long pause in which she could but indistinctly hear continued words, it might have been advice, it might be a prayer, for it was in her uncle’s voice; and then father and son came up to bed. Bessy’s room was but parted from her cousin’s by a thin wooden partition, and the last sound she distinctly heard, before her eyes, tired out with crying, closed themselves in sleep, was the guineas clinking down upon each other at regular intervals, as if Benjamin were playing at pitch and toss with his father’s present.
After he was gone, Bessy wished he had asked her to walk part of the way with him into Highminster. She was all ready, her things laid out on the bed, but she could not accompany him without invitation.
The little household tried to close over the gap as best they might. They seemed to set themselves to their daily work with unusual vigour; but somehow when evening came, there had been little done. Heavy hearts never make light work, and there was no telling how much care and anxiety each had had to bear in secret in the field, at the wheel, or in the dairy. Formerly he was looked for every Saturday; looked for, though he might not come, or if he came, there were things to be spoken about, that made his visit anything but a pleasure: still he might come, and all things might go right, and then what sunshine, what gladness to those simple people. But now he was away, and dreary winter was come on; old folks’ sight fails, and the evenings were long, and sad, in spite of all Bessy could do or say. And he did not write so often as he might so every one thought; though every one would have been ready to defend him from either of the others who had expressed such a thought aloud. “Surely!” said Bessy to herself, when the first primroses peeped out in a sheltered and sunny hedge hank, and she gathered them as she passed home from afternoon church “surely there never will be such a dreary, miserable winter again as this has been.” There had been a great change in Nathan and Bessy Huntroyd during this last year. The spring before, when Benjamin was yet the subject of more hopes than fears, his father and mother looked what I may call an elderly middle-aged couple: people who had a good deal of hearty work in them yet. Now it was not his absence alone that caused the change—they looked frail and old, as if each day’s natural trouble was a burden more than they could bear. For Nathan had heard sad reports about his only child, and had told them solemnly to his wife, as things too bad to be believed, and yet, “God help us if indeed he is such a lad as this!” Their eyes were become too dry and hollow for many tears; they sat together, hand-in-hand; and shivered, and sighed, and did not speak many words, or dare to look at each other: and then Hester had said, “We mauna tell th’ lass. Young folks’ hearts break wi’ a little, and she’d be apt to fancy it were true.” Here the old woman’s voice broke into a kind of piping cry, but she struggled, and her next words were all right. “We mauna tell her, he’s bound to be fond on her, and mebby, if she thinks well on him, and loves him, it will bring him straight.”
“God grant it!” said Nathan.
“God shall grant it,” said Hester, passionately moaning out her words; and then repeating them, alas! with a vain repetition.
“It’s a bad place for lying, is Highminster,” said she, at length, as if impatient of the silence. “I never knowed such a place for getting up stories. But Bessy knows nought on, and nother you nor me belie’es un; that’s one blessing.”
But if they did not in their hearts believe them, how came they to look so sad, and worn, beyond what mere age could do?
Then came round another year, another winter, yet more miserable than the last. This year, with the primroses, came Benjamin; a bad, hard, flipppant young man, with yet enough of specious manners and handsome countenance to make his appearance striking at first to those to whom the aspect of a London fast young man of the lowest order is strange and new. Just at first, as he sauntered in with a swagger and an air of indifference, which was partly assumed, partly real, his old parents felt a simple kind of awe of him, as if he were not their son, but a real gentleman; but they had too much fine instinct in their homely natures not to know, after a very few minutes had passed, that this was not a true prince.
“Whatten ever does he mean,” said Hester to her niece, as soon as they were alone, “by a’ them maks and wearlocks? And he minces his words as if his tongue were clipped short, or split like a magpie’s. Hech! London is as bad as a hot day i’ August for spoiling good flesh; for he were a good-looking lad when he went up; and now, look at him, with his skin gone into lines and flourishes, just like first page on a copy-book!”
“I think he looks a deal better, aunt, for them new-fashioned whiskers!” said Bessy, blushing still at the remembrance of the kiss he had given her on first seeing her—a pledge, she thought, poor girl, that, in spite of his long silence in letter writing, he still looked upon her as his troth-plight wife. There were things about him which none of them liked, although they never spoke about them, yet there was also something to gratify them all in the way in which he remained quiet at Nab-end, instead of seeking variety, as he had formerly done, by constantly stealing off to the neighbouring town. His father had paid all the debts that he knew of, soon after Benjamin had gone up to London; so there were no duns that his parents knew of to alarm him, and keep him at home. And he went out in the morning with the old man, his father, and lounged by his side, as Nathan went round his fields, with busy yet infirm gait, having heart, as he would have expressed it, in all that was going on, because at length his son seemed to take an interest in all the farming affairs, and stood patiently by his side, while he compared his own small galloways with the great short-horns looming over his neighbour’s hedge.
“It’s a slovenly way, thou seest, that of selling th’ milk; folk don’t care whether it’s good or not, so that they get their pint-measure full o’ stuff that’s watered afore it leaves th’ beast, instead o’ honest cheating by the help o’ th’ pump. But look at Bessy’s butter, what skill it shows! part her own manner of making, and part good choice o’ cattle. It’s a pleasure to see her basket, a’ packed ready for to go to market; and it’s noan o’ a pleasure for to see the buckets fu’ of their blue starch-water as yon beasts give. I’m thinking they crossed th’ breed wi’ a pump, not long sin’. Hech! but our Bessy’s a cleaver canny wench! I sometimes think thou’lt be for gi’ng up th’ law, and taking to th’ oud trade, when thou wedst wi’ her!” This was intended to be a skilful way of ascertaining whether there was any ground for the old farmer’s wish and prayer that Benjamin might give up the law, and return to the primitive occupation of his father. Nathan dared to hope it now, since his son had never made much by his profession, owing, as he had said, to his want of a connexion: and the farm, and the stock, and the clean wife, too, were ready to his hand; and Nathan could safely rely on himself never in his most unguarded moments, to reproach his son with the hardly-earned hundreds that had been spent on his education. So the old man listened with painful interest to the answer which his son was evidently struggling to make; coughing a little and blowing his nose before he spoke.
“Well! you see, father, law is a precarious livelihood; a man, as I may express myself, has no chance