XIII The Return Home
A sweet, pleasing-looking girl, of between seventeen and eighteen years of age, occupied a place that day in a third-class carriage of the down train from London. Norah Peele—for it was she—was on her way to her native village of Colme; but she had none of the joyousness which she would have felt, under other circumstances, in making a journey home. All the brightness was gone from that young face, the drooping eyelids were red with the traces of tears, and she looked rather embarrassed than glad at finding that the Clerk of Colme chanced to be one of her travelling companions.
Certainly, John Sands was not one to enliven any society, though he served as a very good protector to the young maiden whom he had known from her childhood. He made a few attempts at conversation, and gave Norah the latest news of the village, casting—as was natural with him—a melancholy hue over all. Mr. Curtis continued ill; the clerk was sure that he would not recover, and that his wife would break down with the nursing; the almshouses were rotting to pieces where they stood, and the collection made for them at church had been smaller than he had ever known one to be before. After these not very cheerful communications, John Sands relapsed into silence, keeping his eyes gravely fixed on the knob of his gingham umbrella, while a melancholy train of thought was evidently flowing through his mind.
“Here we are,” he said at last, slowly raising his head, as the shrill whistle announced their approach to B——; “if you’re going to the village on foot, Norah Peele, we may as well walk there together.”
John Sands, with stiff politeness, helped Norah out of the train. She had hardly stepped on the platform, when they were met by Bat Bell, the miller, whose hard, dry features wore a graver expression than usual.
“Mr. Sands,” he said, addressing himself to the clerk, with merely a nod of recognition to Norah, “as Ned Franks could not come here to-day, and I had business in town, Persis asked me to wait here and tell you”—the miller dropped his voice as he added the words—“about your wife.”
Painful anxiety agitated the sallow face of John Sands; no news of her was likely to be good news. The clerk nervously clutched his umbrella; his pale lips moved, but they framed no question.
“She’d an accident last evening; fell into my pond,—no, no, not drowned; Ned Franks got her out; but her arm is badly hurt, and she’s in the hospital here.”
The clerk waited to hear no more; turning round, without uttering a word, he went off with long strides in the direction of the place where his wretched wife lay on her bed of pain.
“Her arm is smashed, has been taken off,” said the miller to Norah; “but for your brave uncle, the poor, intoxicated wretch would have been torn limb from limb by my wheel.”
“And he—oh, is he hurt?” cried the shuddering girl.
“He’d a narrow shave for his life,” said the miller, “but he got off without even a scratch. He’s a gallant fellow, is your uncle; but I say it was folly in him, a husband and father, to risk his life for a ranting vixen, who’ll drink herself to death one of these days. But you’ll come with me now, Norah Peele; my cart’s waiting near here, and will carry you and your bundle; like a sensible girl, you don’t sport much luggage, I see.”
As the miller’s cart rattled on its way, Bell went on with his talking, at every second sentence giving a cut with his whip to his horse; for the miller liked rapid motion, to “get on” being a ceaseless impulse with him.
“You’ll find changes in Colme, Norah Peele. Misfortunes never come single; there was Nancy Sands struggling in the mill-pond yesterday, and to-day, Ben Stone the carpenter, as strong and hale a man as one could find in the county, is struck down, just as he had finished breakfast, with a kind of a fit. They say that something has given way within him, and that though he may live weeks or months, he’ll not last to the end of the year. Now, there’s a man who looked likely to see ninety; only a little too full-blooded perhaps,” added the miller, who had not an ounce of superfluous flesh on his bones.
Tears came into the eyes of Norah. The carpenter was a popular man in Colme; every one knew so well the portly form, the good-humored, self-complacent smile, the loud voice, the jovial chuckle of Ben, it was difficult to associate with him any idea of sickness or of death. But Bell saw that his news had saddened his young companion, and as his light cart rapidly wheeled round a corner of the road, he as rapidly turned the current of conversation.
“You’ve chosen a pleasant time of the year for your visit to the country, Norah. How long are you likely to stay with your uncle?”
“I don’t know; I can’t say,—I suppose till I get another place,” answered the girl.
“Ah, you’ve tired of London, after a village life; I always thought that you would. Noise, bustle, and bother! Talk of the clack of my mill-wheel,—why, in London there are thousands of wheels perpetually going, and streams of people perpetually flowing; there’s something always on the grind. I like you the better for getting away as fast as you possibly can from London.”
“I’d have stopped there if I could,” said the young servant in a scarcely audible voice.
“Then why did you give warning?” asked the miller.
“I did not give warning,” replied poor Norah, blushing and hanging down her head; “my mistress gave warning to me.”
“There’s simple truth, anyways,” said the miller, a grim smile rising to his lips. “You are just like your sailor uncle: Franks is his name, and frank’s his nature. I don’t believe he ever told an untruth in his life.”
Norah turned her head, and gazed sadly on the meadows and groves, clad in spring’s fresh green, by which she was rapidly passing; but her thoughts did not follow her eyes. The miller’s remark had awakened a train of painful reflections.
“Oh, that it had indeed been so with me!” thought poor Norah; “that I had always kept my lips pure from falsehood; I would not then be returning to be a burden upon my kind and generous uncle. I, whose character stood so high, sent away in disgrace! I, whose word was at once believed! I feel as if I could not bear to tell uncle all,—to let him know of the direct falsehood, and the deceit carried on for months, my mistress’s trust so abused by his niece! Uncle will think that all his care and kindness have been thrown away upon Norah; that I am still the foolish, deceitful, bad girl that I was when he first came to Colme, and tried to teach me to be honest and truthful, and straightforward, as a Christian should be. It seems as if I could endure anything rather than the loss of his good opinion, and that of dear Aunt Persis! And yet,”—thus Norah pursued her reflections, to which the miller now left her, his mind being occupied in reckoning up the amount of his savings deposited in the county bank of B——,—“and yet, the safest, the best course for me now, must be to be perfectly frank and open. Alas! I cannot recall the past, but I can draw from bitter experience a lesson for the future. I will confess everything to my uncle, conceal nothing, make no excuses; and oh, may the God of truth help me from this time forward indeed to take heed to my ways, that I offend not with my tongue!”
I will not dwell on the kindly welcome given to Norah Peele by Persis and Ned Franks. She was received as a daughter, no questions asked, no painful inquiries made as to the cause of her leaving her place. “Leave the lass to tell her own story when and how she likes,” the one-armed sailor had said to his wife. So the baby now happily sleeping, was shown and admired; topics of general interest were alone spoken of at the evening meal which followed Franks’s day of toil; the state of the almshouses in Wild Rose Hollow, the progress made in their repair, the accident to the clerk’s wife, the sudden and serious illness of Stone the carpenter, the good report of improvement in the health of the vicar,—all these were made subjects of conversation, everything being avoided which might possibly embarrass the guest. All was done to make her feel at her ease. Norah, it was said, would be so useful in helping to nurse the baby; Norah would look after the flowers, now that her uncle was too busy all day to have time to work in his garden. How delighted old Sarah Mason would be to have Norah to read the Bible to her again!
The poor girl felt grateful for the kindness and consideration thus shown her, and thankful that such a home was left to her still; but a burden was weighing on her mind, and even while conversation was going on, in which she appeared to join, a smothered sigh, or a sudden moistening of her eyes, showed that her thoughts were wandering to something painful. When the tea-things had been cleared away by the active Persis, assisted by Norah, when cups and saucers had been washed and replaced on the shelf, and the outer door closed for the night (it never was bolted or barred), Norah sat down on a little wooden stool at the feet of her aunt, and recounted, with simple truthfulness, all the circumstances that had led to her hasty dismissal from the service of Mrs. Lowndes. I shall give you the story, not in Norah’s words, but my own, beginning it by a short account of her early days in Colme.