Mrs. Leigh

“ She stood looking at her with greedy eyes, which seemed as though no gazing could satisfy their longing; and at last she stooped down and kissed the pale, worn hand that lay outside the bed-clothes. No touch disturbed the sleeper; the mother need not have laid the hand so gently down upon the counterpane. There was no sign of life, save only now and then a deep sob-like sigh. Mrs. Leigh sat down beside the bed, and still holding back the curtain, looked on and on, as if she could never be satisfied.
Susan would fain have stayed by her darling one ”

“ Before the wild daffodils were in flower in the sheltered copses round Upclose Farm, the Leighs were settled in their Manchester home; if they could ever grow to consider that place as a home, where there was no garden or outbuilding, no fresh breezy outlet, no far-stretching view, over moor and hollow; no dumb animals to be tended, and, what more than all they missed, no old haunting memories, even though those remembrances told of sorrow, and the dead and gone.
Mrs. Leigh heeded the loss of all these things less than her sons. ”

“ And now, will you look at the little clothes that came with her—bless her!”
But Mrs. Leigh had fainted. The strange joy and shame, and gushing love for the little child, had overpowered her; it was some time before Susan could bring her round. There she was all trembling, sick with impatience to look at the little frocks. Among them was a slip of paper which Susan had forgotten to name, that had been pinned to the bundle. On it was scrawled in a round stiff hand—
“Call her Anne. She does not cry much, and takes a deal of notice. God bless you and forgive me.” ”

“ It might have been twenty minutes before the vessel hove in sight again round the dark rocks of the Hubbastone, as she turned up the Bideford river. Mrs. Leigh had stood that whole time perfectly motionless, a pale and scarcely breathing statue, her eyes fixed upon the Viking's rock.
Round the Hubbastone she came at last. There was music on board, drums and fifes, shawms and trumpets, which wakened ringing echoes from every knoll of wood and slab of slate. ”

“ Leigh felt that it was wise to check this line of criticism, and he now spoke seriously.
"You must not be so critical of your Aunt. She is really very fond of you—and she was your mother's half-sister. You must respect her and love her."
"I love her, but I don't like her. She and Milly McSheen are just alike—always boasting of what they have, and do, and running down what others have, and do."
"Oh, well, it takes a great many people to make a world," said Mr. Leigh indulgently. Eleanor felt a want of sympathy and made another bid for it. ”

“ For her whole soul is set upon being an English maid; and she runs about all day long after Mrs. Leigh, insisting upon learning the mysteries of the kitchen and the stillroom, and, above all, the art of marking clothes for herself, and at last for everybody in Northam. For first, she will be a good housewife, like Mrs. Leigh; and next a new idea has dawned on her; that, of helping others. To the boundless hospitality of the savage she has been of course accustomed: but to give to those who can give nothing in return, is a new thought. ”

“ Leigh tried to understand this speech for some time, but found it difficult of interpretation.
"Why should'st thou not tell her thou lov's her? Thou'rt a likely lad, and sure o' work. Thou'lt have Upclose at my death; and as for that I could let thee have it now, and keep mysel' by doing a bit of charring. It seems to me a very backward sort o' way of winning her to think of leaving Manchester."
"Oh, mother, she's so gentle and so good—she's downright holy. She's never known a touch of sin; and can I ask her to marry me, knowing what we do about Lizzie, and fearing worse! ”

“ He had entered into the darkness in which every man walks who hates his brother; and it lay upon him like a black shadow day and night. No company, too, could be more fit to darken that shadow than Salvation Yeo's. The old man grew more stern in his fanaticism day by day, and found a too willing listener in his master; and Mrs. Leigh was (perhaps for the first and last time in her life) seriously angry, when she heard the two coolly debating whether they had not committed a grievous sin in not killing the Spanish prisoners on board the galleon. ”

“ Leigh.
“Well, if she would not do it, I would, and ask pardon afterwards, as Raleigh did about the rascals at Smerwick, whom Amyas knows of. Mrs. Leigh, these are times in which mercy is cruelty. Not England alone, but the world, the Bible, the Gospel itself, is at stake; and we must do terrible things, lest we suffer more terrible ones.”
“God will take care of world and Bible better than any cruelty of ours, dear Sir Richard.” ”

“ Had he been less infatuated, he might have divined in this omission one of those unconscious revelations of character—the selfishness of a spoiled and petted woman, who has come to assume that the convenience of others must necessarily coincide with her own. But Leigh saw only a hint of something confidential between them. He experienced also that peculiar intensity of interest which attends a lover's first glimpse of his mistress's handwriting. Even if it were commonplace, it would seem to him like no other in the world ”

“ Susan coloured up to her temples, and stooped to pick up the little toddling girl. In a minute or two Mrs. Leigh began again.
“Will thinks you would na respect us if you knew all; but I think you could na help feeling for us in the sorrow God has put upon us; so I just put on my bonnet, and came off unknownst to the lads. Every one says you’re very good, and that the Lord has keeped you from falling from His ways; but maybe you’ve never yet been tried and tempted as some is. ”

“ Ah, Miss Leigh,
You’re great and pure; but were you purer still,—
As if you had walked, we’ll say, no otherwhere
Than up and down the new Jerusalem,
And held your trailing lutestring up yourself
From brushing the twelve stones, for fear of some
Small speck as little as a needle prick,
White stitched on white,—the child would keep to me,
Would choose his poor lost Marian, like me best,
And, though you stretched your arms, cry back and cling,
As we do, when God says it’s time to die
And bids us go up higher. Leave us then;
We two are happy. Does he push me off? ”

“ Leigh is very handsome, very agreeable, wealthy and intelligent, and is considered a fine match for any girl; yet your protegee discards him most positively, alleging as a reason that she does not love him, and prefers hard labor as a teacher to securing an elegant home by becoming his wife. That she can decline so brilliant an offer seems to you incredible, but I knew from the beginning that she would not accept it. My dear Aunt Ellen, she aspires to the honor of becoming your daughter-in-law, and can well afford to refuse Mr. Leigh's hand, when she hopes to be mistress of Le Bocage. ”

“ Then a kiss and a sob passed between the women; and he felt Ayacanora sink once more upon his bosom.
“Amyas, my son,” said the silver voice of Mrs. Leigh, low, dreamy, like the far-off chimes of angels' bells from out the highest heaven, “fear not to take her to your heart again; for it is your mother who has laid her there.”
“It is true, after all,” said Amyas to himself. “What God has joined together, man cannot put asunder.” ”

“ But, indeed, madam, I put no faith in such omens.”
“But, Sir Richard, that bird has been seen for generations before the death of any of his family. I know those who were at South Tawton when his mother died, and his brother also; and they both saw it. God help him! for, after all, he is a proper man.”
“So many a lady has thought before now, Mrs. Leigh, and well for him if they had not. But, indeed, I make no account of omens. When God is ready for each man, then he must go; and when can he go better?” ”

“ As to Mary, the second child, she was nineteen years of age, and newly returned from school, when Edward Leigh, the son of old Squire Leigh, of the Hall, came home from his travels round the world. These two, who had only distantly known each other as children, met for the first time after many years—she a sweet-looking, fresh-coloured girl, in the first blush of womanhood; and he a manly, well-set young fellow with a pleasant, sincere face and straightforward blue eyes. ”

“ Childer used to be fond on me till I got the sad look on my face that scares them, I think.”
But the little girl clung to Susan; so she carried it upstairs with her. Mrs. Leigh sat by herself—how long she did not know.
Susan came down with a bundle of far-worn baby-clothes.
“You must listen to me a bit, and not think too much about what I’m going to tell you. Nanny is not my niece, nor any kin to me, that I know of. I used to go out working by the day. One night, as I came home, I thought some woman was following me; I turned to look. ”

“ Mrs. Leigh had learned many a priceless lesson in the last seven years; might not Mary Stuart have learned something in seventeen? And Mrs. Leigh had been a courtier, and knew, as far as a chaste Englishwoman could know (which even in those coarser days was not very much) , of that godless style of French court profligacy in which poor Mary had had her youthful training, amid the Medicis, and the Guises, and Cardinal Lorraine ”

“ I saw him in a dream four years last Whitsuntide, as plain as I see you now, gentles, a-lying upon a rock, calling for a drop of water to cool his tongue, like Dives to the torment! Oh! dear me!” and the old dame wept bitterly.
“There is a rose noble for you!” said Mrs. Leigh.
“And there another!” said Sir Richard. And in a few minutes four or five gold coins were in her hand. But the old dame did but look wonderingly at the gold a moment, and then—
“Ah! dear gentles, God's blessing on you, and Mr. Cary's mighty good to me already; but gold won't buy back childer! O! young gentleman! ”

“ I would be good and great—When will the day come when I shall be content to be good, and yet not great, like this same simple Leigh, toiling on by my side to do his duty, with no more thought for the morrow than the birds of God? ”

“ He stands on Right’s side; never flinch for him,
As if he stood on the other. You’ll be bound
By me? I am a woman of repute;
No fly-blow gossip ever specked my life;
My name is clean and open as this hand,
Whose glove there’s not a man dares blab about,
As if he had touched it freely:—here’s my hand
To clasp your hand, my Marian, owned as pure!
As pure,—I’m a woman and a Leigh!—
And, as I’m both, I’ll witness to the world
That Romney Leigh is honoured in his choice,
Who chooses Marian for his honoured wife.’
Her broad wild woodland eyes shot out a light ”

“ The girl had, indeed, been well-trained by a good mother, and after the death of that beloved relative had been so wrapped up in her father, of whom she was passionately fond, that she had never experienced any desire to mix with the outside world, of which Leigh soon discovered that she knew absolutely nothing. ”

“ Perhaps if fate had not presented Leigh with a desire for the theater that evening, Gun Metal and the vicissitudes of his career might have troubled him no more.
We eat, sleep, and out of ourselves perform little acts, and all the time the other thing that has no name puts our hand and our mind to that which is, or is to be. So Leigh, with the entanglement of this It enmeshing him, looked up from his seat in the stalls and saw Kathleen Braund in an upper box. ”

“ Leigh died early in June, 1883, and the following graceful parody of his poem appeared in Judy, June 27, 1883.
In the Strand.
In form and feature, face, and limb,
He tried to build a double,
And folks got taking it for him,
For want of taking trouble.
“A bitter-minded cynic this!”
Said those who argued blindly.
He took their finding not amiss,
Nor thought it meant unkindly.
He dreamed long dreams, and meant to do
A heap of great grand work;
’T is p’r’aps the same with me and you,
And still the race we shirk.
Another face gone from the Strand,
A voice we hear no more ”

“ While all the dead keep whispering through the withes,
‘You would be better in your place with us,
‘You pitiful corruption!’ At the thought,
The damps break out on me like leprosy,
Although I’m clean. Ay, clean as Marian Erle:
As Marian Leigh, I know, I were not clean:
I have not so much life that I should love,
. . Except the child. Ah God! ”

“ And there those two vowed everlasting sisterhood, and kept their vow; and after that all things went on at Burrough as before; and Amyas rode, and shot, and boxed, and wandered on the quay at Sir Richard's side; for Mrs. Leigh was too wise a woman to alter one tittle of the training which her husband had thought best for his younger boy. It was enough that her elder son had of his own accord taken to that form of life in which she in her secret heart would fain have moulded both her children. For Frank, God's wedding gift to that pure love of hers, had won himself honor at home and abroad ”

“ He did not doubt now that Leigh was in love with his daughter, and for the first time he was seriously doubtful of her attitude toward a young man. Proud and beautiful, she had always held herself aloof, with something of fine scorn, from the frock-coated, silk-hatted, conventional men of her acquaintance, as if she shared her father's opinion of her worth, as if she secretly sympathised with the plans she knew he cherished concerning the completion of the college quadrangle. Was she now to decline to the level of this fortune hunter, this crude young Westerner? ”

“ In that case,—and the noble house of Leigh
Must henceforth with its good roof shelter you:
I cannot speak and burn you up between
Those rafters, I who am born a Leigh,—nor speak
And pierce your breast through Romney’s, I who live
His friend and cousin!—so, you are safe. You two
Must grow together like the tares and wheat
Till God’s great fire.—But make the best of time.
‘And hide this letter! let it speak no more
Than I shall, how you tricked poor Marian Erle,
And set her own love digging her own grave
Within her green hope’s pretty garden-ground ”