Ellen Nussey

“ Ellen Nussey accompanies us (by Anne’s expressed wish) . I could not refuse her society, but I dared not urge her to go, for I have little hope that the excursion will be one of pleasure or benefit to those engaged in it. Anne is extremely weak. She herself has a fixed impression that the sea air will give her a chance of regaining strength; that chance, therefore, we must have. Having resolved to try the experiment, misgivings are useless; and yet, when I look at her, misgivings will rise. She is more emaciated than Emily was at the very last ”

“ TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY
‘June 12th, 1854.
‘Dear Ellen,—Papa preached twice to-day as well and as strongly as ever. It is strange how he varies, how soon he is depressed and how soon revived. It makes me feel so thankful when he is better. I am thankful too that you are stronger, dear Nell. My worthy acquaintance at Kirk-Smeaton refuses to acknowledge himself better yet. I am uneasy about not writing to Miss Wooler. I fear she will think me negligent, while I am only busy and bothered. I want to clear up my needlework a little, and have been sewing against time since I was at Brookroyd. Mr. ”

“ This is a lengthy digression from the story of Emily’s life, but it is of moment to discover whether there is any evidence of influences other than those which her Yorkshire home afforded. I have discussed the matter with Miss Ellen Nussey, and with Mr. Nicholls. Miss Nussey never, in all her visits to Haworth, heard a single reference to the Irish legends related by Dr. Wright, and firmly believes them to be mythical. Mr. Nicholls, during the six years that he lived alone at the parsonage with his father-in-law, never heard one single word from Mr. ”

“ Yes, yes,—the very moral of them!" murmured the old woman, as she sought her pails and measures. "Just what my father was!"
"Pshaw!" said Nelly; "you are just thinking of some of those rubbishing old Butlers. I wish there had never been any such people in the world; and I don't half believe there ever were."
It was, perhaps, as well for Nelly's peace that Granny Ryan was making too much noise with her tin pails to hear this irreverent speech. Nelly would certainly have had the milk to carry round herself; and so have lost the chance of sitting down on the door-step and working at her tatting. ”

“ Nelly Ryan, leaning over her grandmother's gate, with no one to teach her even to read, thought she would be perfectly happy if she could only go to boarding-school, and walk to church on Sunday morning with a nice dress and clean collar. Nelly Lambert, who had been taught and cared for all her life,—whose father spent hundreds of dollars every year upon her education,—had been fretting that very morning at being obliged to dress and go to church, and thought if she had no lessons to learn, and nothing to do but to amuse herself all day long, SHE would be perfectly happy. ”

“ It was hard to think of Ellen ever having had a baby. She stopped herself from pursuing this obsession a half a dozen times, but the spell of curiosity lingered. And still she could not bring herself to speak to the woman. By nightfall she was scattered and depressed, with the feeling of having spent a wasted day.
She went to bed early and tried again to read Hugo, but instead, she found herself rereading the McCoy letter. It drew her like a sinister charm. She threw on a dressing gown and began walking in the room. ”

“ Mind, Nelly, you are a lady born, for all that; but dear, it is better far to be a child of God than to be a grand-child of all the earls in Ireland. And now give me my fine new shawl and hood, till I go home with poor Kitty."
"Oh, granny," cried Nelly, struck with a sudden idea, "suppose you were to go to Mrs. Powers with her and ask Mrs. Powers to take her back and try her again? You know she is such a kind lady, and she always did like you. Do try." ”

“ Kirkland, when, on passing her favourite book-store, where the pictures were exhibited, she saw Mr. Lambert's tall figure and silver beard towering above a number of people who were looking at a large painting. Nelly had not seen him for some months, and hardly expected him to recognize her; but he pounced upon her at once.
"Why, Nelly, is this you? I have been meaning to hunt you up, ever since I came home. How nicely you look! What are you doing now-a-days? Making tatting?"
"Making a great many things," said Nelly. "I am in Mrs. Kirkland's store," she added, feeling two inches taller. ”

“ Ellen took up the thought again. "I've been thinking all day about mother being with father and how glad he'll be to see her, and yet it seems as if I can feel her here. I [Pg 88] thought if we kept still a while she'd make us understand what she wanted us to do."
"About what, Ellen?"
"About my going up to the city with you to board—it seems such a wasteful way to live somehow, just sitting around!"
"It isn't as expensive as keeping house," Peter told her, "and I want you to sit around, Ellen; women in Bloombury don't get enough of that I'm afraid."
"They don't. Did you see Ada Harvey to-day? ”

“ We cannot always judge for other people. What is your name?"
"Nelly Ryan."
"And do you live here?" asked the young lady, glancing at the house. Nelly looked at it too, and, somehow, as she followed the direction of Miss Powell's eye, she seemed to see, as she had never done before, what a miserable place it was, how black and dirty the floor looked through the open door, and what quantities of old bones, old shoes and other rubbish were littered about the door-yard. The bitter feeling came up in her heart again, as she answered,—
"Yes; I live here with my grandmother. ”

“ Ellen sits in the armchair drowsily listening, coolness of powder on her face and arms, fatness of rouge on her lips, her body just bathed fresh as a violet under the silk dress, under the silk underclothes; she sits dreamily, drowsily listening. A sudden twinge of men's voices knotting about her. She sits up cold white out of reach like a lighthouse. Men's hands crawl like bugs on the unbreakable glass. Men's looks blunder and flutter against it helpless as moths. ”

“ Ellen's questions and shrewd guessing brought me at last to narrate the whole story of my whilom infatuation for Miss Nelly, and the narrow escape I made from being led to play a traitor's part by her wiles.
"She must be loyal Tory, indeed," was Ellen's comment, "or else she knew you less than her opportunities permitted, for she risked her happiness most rashly."
"Her happiness was little at stake, I have thought since; had she truly loved me she would have prized my honor more." ”

“ Women were not made for adversity and solitude; they were flowers that only opened fully when happiness kissed them. Ellen might shift the responsibility over onto his shoulders.
The next day he dressed himself carefully to go out and make the final agreement with the manufacturer. Ellen helped him to button his collar, and brushed his coat, talking, as she did so, with the lightheartedness of a bird, of the future. “What are we going to do now? We must try and get rid of this flat and move out to that end of the town,” she said, “or else you’ll have too far to walk.” ”

“ Ellen approached the bed. Before her lay, though pale and motionless as in the cold embrace of death, a being of God-like impress. His jetty locks flung from his upturned face, fell in loose masses on his pillow, displaying a brow which bore the stamp of high and lofty intellect: while drooping lashes of the same dark hue, pressing so heavily on his marble cheek, contrasted strangely with the deathly pallor of his chiseled features, on which were marked deep furrows—not such as wrought by either time or care, but mighty convulsions of the soul! ”

“ The difficulty of explaining a circumstance of which she knew but little, was enhanced by her knowledge of Ellen's rigid and unbending sense of right. “Poor dear Nelly,” said she, “with her innocence of mind, will understand nothing of all this, or she will condemn Lady Hester at once. Submission to her husband would, in her opinion, have been the first of duties. She cannot appreciate motives which actuate society in a rank different from her own. In her ignorance of the world, too, she might deem my remaining here unadvisable; she might counsel my return to home ”

“ Nelly ventured to say.
Mr. Grayson smiled. "Oh, very well. You may make a payment upon the first day of May, if you have ten or twenty dollars to spare. Now, Nelly, I expect you to keep strictly to these conditions; for I intend to do so myself; and I shall not feel myself bound by my part of the bargain unless you keep to yours. Do you understand me?"
"Yes, sir," said Nelly; "and I will do my best. But—"
"Well, but what?"
"I don't know what granny will say. She thinks there is no use in keeping things so nice; and she will not keep Crummie tied up, whatever I say." ”

“ I love Josy too well to leave her, now that I find myself necessary to her happiness. I love Edwin, too; he has behaved nobly to me, and generously. The only man I ever could have married is lost to me. So, Ellen, I can lead a single life, and be a nice old maid.”
And she kept her word, reader; never was there so kind, so pleasant a companion as my friend Isabel. ”

“ Every time one walked in the Old Town she had just gone by, beautiful and pale as though in her veins there flowed exquisite blood that diffused radiance instead of ruddiness, clad in the black and white that must have been a more solemn challenge, a more comprehensive announcement of free dealings with good and evil, than the mere extravagance of scarlet could have been; and wearing a string of pearls to salve the wound she doubtless always felt about her neck. Ellen glowed at the picture as girls do at womanly beauty. ”

“ You'd coax the very birds off the trees!" said Granny Ryan. "Sure I hope to see you in your own drawing-room before I die."
"And, then, think what a fine thing to know all sorts of nice work!" said Nelly. "Well, granny, I'm off. Take good care of yourself and Crummie, and I'll buy something good for supper when I come home. They are selling the spare-ribs very cheap."
Nelly succeeded even better to-day than yesterday, and very proud she felt to be left in the entire charge of the lower shop while Mrs. Kirkland went out to the bank and Miss Powell was busy up-stairs. ”

“ Almost every one who has tried to benefit children of Nelly's class has met with this feeling, and found it a great hindrance. People do not like to have their children better off than themselves.
Mrs. Ryan was not so bad in this respect as many others that I have met; but she could not help a spasm of jealousy now and then. She raised numberless objections to Nelly's going to the shop,—her own loneliness, Crummie's needs, and the necessity of Nelly's going after the slops for her.
But Nelly disposed of all in one way or another. She knew that Mrs. Kirkland needed her services ”

“ Eden made as much haste to smash up the spar as though she had seen it—"poor Ellen, when her mother and father died she was but six. There was only her and my Fred, so naturally we took her, and what little money the old lady left we spent on her, sending her to a good school, and never counting the bit of clothes and victuals. She was always for learning something, and above her station, and the Rev. Mrs. Peterson at St. Michael, and All Angels—she made a sort of pet of Ellen, and set her up, more than a bit." ”

“ He was in a solemn mood, and felt as though, after an absence of many years, he had once more entered the land of his childhood. There was a familiar feeling in the soft pressure of the earth beneath his feet; it was like a caress that made him strong and gave him new life. Here, with his feet on the soil, he felt himself invincible.
“You’re so silent!” said Ellen, taking his arm so as to walk beside him upon the dike. ”

“ Her life was hard but not unpeaceful, and the old people, all dead and gone now, remembered Ellen as a very quiet, staid woman who worked hard for a living, sometimes at the wash-tub, but mostly in the fields, haymaking and harvesting and at other times weeding, or collecting flints, or with a spud or sickle extirpating thistles in the pasture-land. She worked alone or with other poor women, but with the men she had no friendships; the sharpest women's eyes in the village could see no fault in her in this respect ”

“ And the Rhyme hopped up and down as though its toes were made of rubber.
But Ellen looked anxious. "I wonder how we're all to get back," she said, with a glance at the Fairy Tale. "I don't believe the gander can carry us all."
[178]
"Oh, you're not going back with me," he answered. "The journey's too long for that, and there's an easier way."
"Yes, a much easier way," chimed in the Queerbody. "Why, it's so easy that sometimes I go home without even trying."
Ellen wondered. "Do you? And then you have to come all that long way to get here again?" ”

“ It is everything to me to have a girl whom I can trust."
Nelly did not know what to say. She had never dreamed of having so much money, all her own, at one time. Now, if Miss Powell would only go with her to choose granny's shawl, she felt that her happiness would be complete.
Miss Powell was very ready to do so, and they set out together. A warm and handsome plaid shawl—good enough for any lady, Nelly said—was purchased for ten dollars; and Nelly bought a good, serviceable, plaid woollen frock and a pair of stout boots for herself, leaving the subject of a shawl for future consideration. ”