Works of Ellen Wood, page 559
“Will the master see to-morrow’s sun, sir?”
“It’s rising now; he may do so. He will not see its setting.”
Can you picture to yourselves what that night was for the house and its inmates? In the parlour, gathered round the table on which lay the dying man supported by pillows and covered with blankets, were Mrs. Ryle, George and Trevlyn, the surgeon, and sometimes Nora. In the outer room was collected a larger group: John Pinder, the men who had borne him home, and Molly; with a few others whom the news of the accident had brought together.
Mrs. Ryle stood near her husband. George and Trevlyn seemed scarcely to know what to do with themselves; and Mr. King sat in a chair in the recess of the bay window. Mr. Ryle looked grievously wan, and the surgeon administered medicine from time to time.
“Come here, my boys,” he suddenly said. “Come close to me.”
They approached as he spoke, and leaned over him. He took a hand of each. George swallowed down his tears in the best way that he could. Trevlyn looked frightened.
“Children, I am going. It has pleased God to cut me off in the midst of my career, just when I had least thought of death. I don’t know how it will be with you, my dear ones, or how it will be with the old home. Chattaway can sell up everything if he chooses; and I fear there’s little hope but he will do it. If he would let your mother stay on, she might keep things together, and get clear of him in time. George will be growing into more of a man every day, and may soon learn to be useful in the farm, if his mother thinks well to trust him. Maude, you’ll do your best for them? For him, as for the younger ones?”
“I will,” said Mrs. Ryle.
“Ay, I know you will. I leave them all to you, and you will act for the best. I think it’s well George should be upon the farm, as I am taken from it; but you and he will see to that. Treve, you must do the best you can in whatever station you may be called to. I don’t know what it will be. My boys, there’s nothing before you but work. Do you understand that?”
“Fully,” was George’s answer. Treve seemed too bewildered to give one.
“To work with all your might; your shoulders to the wheel. Do your best in all ways. Be honest and single-hearted in the sight of God; work for Him whilst you are working for yourselves, and then He will prosper you. I wish I had worked for Him more than I have done!”
A pause, broken only by George, who could no longer control his sobs.
“My days seem to have been made up of nothing but struggling, and quarrelling, and care. Struggling to keep my head above water, and quarrelling with Chattaway. The end seemed far-off, ages away, something as heaven seems. And now the end’s come, and heaven’s come — that is, I must set out upon the journey that leads to it. I fear the end comes to many as suddenly; cutting them off in their carelessness and their sins. Do not spend your days in quarrelling, my boys; be working on a bit for the end whilst time is given you. I don’t know how it will be in the world I am about to enter. Some fancy that when once we have entered it, we shall see what is going on here, in our families and homes. For that thought, if for no other, I would ask you to try and keep right. If you were to go wrong, think how it would grieve me! I should always be thinking that I might have trained you better, and had not done so. Children! it is only when we come to lie here that we see all our shortcomings. You would not like to grieve me, George?”
“Oh, no! no!” said George, his sobs deepening. “Indeed I will try to do my best. I shall be always thinking that perhaps you are watching me.”
“One greater than I is always watching you, George. And that is God. Act well in His sight; not in mine. Doctor, I must have some more of that stuff. I feel a strange sinking.”
Mr. King rose, poured some drops into a wine-glass of water, and administered them. The patient lay a few moments, and then took his sons’ hands, as before.
“And now, children, for my last charge to you. Reverence and love your mother. Obey her in all things. George, she is not your own mother, but you have never known another, and she has been as one to you. Listen to her always, and she will lead you aright. If I had listened to her, I shouldn’t be lying where I am now. A week or two ago I wanted the character of that outdoor man from Chattaway. ‘Don’t go through that field,’ she said before I started. ‘Better keep where the bull can’t touch you.’ Do you remember, Maude?”
Mrs. Ryle simply bowed her head in reply. She was feeling the scene deeply, but emotion she would not show.
“I heeded what your mother said, and went up to Chattaway’s, avoiding the fields,” resumed Mr. Ryle. “This last afternoon, when I was going up again and had got to the field gate, I turned into it, for it cut off a few steps, and my temper was up. I thought of what your mother would say, as I swung in, but it didn’t stop me. It must have been that red neckerchief that put him up, for I was no sooner over the gate than he bellowed savagely and butted at me. It was all over in a minute; I was in the ditch, and he went on, bellowing and tossing and tearing at the cloth. If you go there to-morrow, you’ll see it in shreds about the field. Children, obey your mother; there’ll be still greater necessity for it when I am gone.”
The boys had been obedient hitherto. At least, George had been: Trevlyn was too indulged to be perfectly so. George promised that he would be so still.
“I wish I could have seen the little wench,” resumed the dying man, the tears gathering on his eyelashes. “But it may be for the best that she’s away, for I should hardly have borne parting with her. Maude! George! Treve! I leave her to you all. Do the best you can by her. I don’t know that she’ll be spared to grow up, for she’s a delicate little mite: but that is as God pleases. I wish I could have stayed with you all a bit longer — if it’s not sinful to wish contrary to God’s will. Is Mr. King there?”
Mr. King had resumed his seat in the bay window, and was partially hidden by the curtain. He came forward. “Is there anything I can do for you, Mr. Ryle?”
“You would oblige me by writing out a few directions. I should like to write them myself, but it is impossible; you’ll enter the sentences just as I speak them. I have not made my will. I put it off, and put it off, thinking I could do it at any time; but now the end’s come, and it is not done. Death surprises a great many, I fear, as he has surprised me. It seems that if I could only have one day more of health, I would do many things I have left undone. You shall write down my wishes, doctor. It will do as well; for there’s only themselves, and they won’t dispute one with the other. Let a little table be brought, and pen, ink, and paper.”
He lay quiet whilst these directions were obeyed, and then began again.
“I am in very little pain, considering that I am going; not half as much as when I lay in that ditch. Thank God for it! It might have been that I could not have left a written line, or said a word of farewell to you. There’s sure to be a bit of blue sky in the darkest trouble; and the more implicitly we trust, the more blue sky we shall find. I have not been what I ought to be, especially in the matter of disputing with Chattaway — not but that Chattaway’s hardness has been in fault. But God is taking me from a world of care, and I trust He will forgive all my shortcomings for our Saviour’s sake. Is everything ready?”
“All is ready,” said Mr. King.
“Then leave me alone with the doctor a short time, dear ones,” he resumed. “We shall not keep you out long.”
Nora, who had brought in the things required, held the door open for them to pass through. The pinched look that the face, lying there, was assuming, struck upon her ominously.
“After all, the boy was right,” she murmured. “The scratched hole was not meant for Jim Sanders.”
CHAPTER V
MAUDE TREVLYN
The sun rose gloriously, dispersing the early October frost, and brightening the world. But the sunbeams fall upon dark scenes sometimes; perhaps more often than upon happy ones.
George Ryle was leaning on the fold-yard gate. He had strolled out without his hat, and his head was bent in grief. Not that he was shedding tears now. He had shed plenty during the night; but tears cannot flow for ever, even from an aching heart.
Hasty steps were heard approaching down the road, and George raised his head. They were Mr. Chattaway’s. He stopped suddenly at sight of George.
“What is this about your father? What has happened? Is he dead?”
“He is dying,” replied George. “The doctors are with him. Mr. King has been here all night, and Mr. Benage has just come again from Barmester. They have sent us out of the room; me and Treve. They let my mother remain with him.”
“But how on earth did it happen?” asked Chattaway. “I cannot make it out. The first thing I heard when I woke this morning was that Mr. Ryle had been gored to death by the bull. What brought him near the bull?”
“He was passing through the field up to your house, and the bull attacked him — —”
“But when? when?” hastily interrupted Mr. Chattaway.
“Yesterday afternoon. My father came in directly after you rode away, and I gave him your message. He said he would go up to the Hold at once, and speak to you; and took the field way instead of the road.”
“Now, how could he take it? He knew it was hardly safe for strangers. Not but that the bull ought to have known him.”
“He had a red cravat in his hand, and he thinks that excited the bull. It tossed him into the ditch, and he lay there, undiscovered, until past ten at night.”
“And he is badly hurt?”
“He is dying,” replied George, “dying now. I think that is why they sent us from the room.”
Mr. Chattaway paused in dismay. Though a hard, selfish man, who had taken delight in quarrelling with Mr. Ryle and putting upon him, he did possess some feelings of humanity as well as his neighbours; and the terrible nature of the case naturally called them forth. George strove manfully to keep down his tears; relating the circumstances was almost too much for him, but he did not care to give way before the world, especially before that unit in it represented by Mr. Chattaway. Mr. Chattaway rested his elbow on the gate, and looked down at George.
“This is very shocking, lad. I am sorry to hear it. What will the farm do without him? How shall you all get on?”
“Thinking of that has been troubling him all night,” said George. “He said we might get a living at the farm, if you would let us do it. If you would not be hard,” he added, determined to speak out.
“Hard, he called me, did he?” said Mr. Chattaway. “It’s not my hardness that has been in fault, but his pride. He has been as saucy and independent as if he did not owe me a shilling; always making himself out my equal.”
“He is your equal,” said George, speaking gently in his sadness.
“My equal! Working Tom Ryle the equal of the Chattaways! A man who rents two or three hundred acres and does half the work himself, the equal of the landlord who owns them and ever so many more to them! — equal to the Squire of Trevlyn Hold! Where did you pick up those notions, boy?”
George had a great mind to say that in strict justice Mr. Chattaway had no more right to be Squire of Trevlyn Hold, or to own those acres, than his father had; not quite so much right, if it came to that. He had a great mind to say that the Ryles were gentlemen, and once owners of what his father now rented. But George remembered they were in Chattaway’s power; he could sell them up, and turn them from the farm, if he pleased; and he held his tongue.
“Not that I blame you for the notions,” Mr. Chattaway resumed, in the same thin, unpleasant tones — never was there a voice more thin and wiry than his. “It’s natural you should have got them from Ryle, for they were his. He was always —— But there! I won’t say any more, with him lying there, poor fellow. We’ll let it drop, George.”
“I do not know how things are between you and my father,” said George, “except that there’s money owing to you. But if you will not press us, if you will let my mother remain on the farm, I — —”
“That’s enough,” interrupted Mr. Chattaway. “Never trouble your head about business that’s above you. Anything between me and your father, or your mother either, is no concern of yours; you are not old enough to interfere yet. I should like to see him. Do you think I may go in?”
“We can ask,” answered George; some vague and indistinct idea floating to his mind that a death-bed reconciliation might help to smooth future difficulties.
He led the way through the fold-yard. Nora was coming out at the back-door as they advanced.
“Nora, do you think Mr. Chattaway may go in to see my father?” asked George.
“If it will do Mr. Chattaway any good,” responded Nora, who ever regarded that gentleman in the light of a common enemy, and could with difficulty bring herself to be commonly civil to him. “It’s all over; but Mr. Chattaway can see what’s left of him.”
“Is he dead?” whispered Mr. Chattaway; whilst George lifted his white and startled face.
“He is dead!” broke forth Nora; “and perhaps there may be some that will wish now they had been less hard with him in life. The doctors and Mrs. Ryle have just come out, and the women have gone in to put him straight and comfortable. Mr. Chattaway can go in also, if he would like it.”
Mr. Chattaway, it appeared, did not like it. He turned from the door, drawing George with him.
“George, tell your mother I am grieved at her trouble, and wish that beast of a bull had been stuck before he had done this. Tell her if there’s any little thing she could fancy from the Hold, to let Edith know, and she’ll gladly send it to her. Good-bye, lad. You and Treve must keep up, you know.”
He passed out by the fold-yard gate, as he had entered, and George leaned upon it again, with his aching heart; an orphan now. Treve and Caroline had their mother left, but he had no one. It is true he had never known a mother, and Mrs. Ryle, his father’s second wife, had supplied the place of one. She had done her duty by him; but it had not been in love; nor very much in gentleness. Of her own children she was inordinately fond; she had not been so of George — which perhaps was in accordance with human nature. It had never troubled George much; but the fact now struck upon him with a sense of intense loneliness. His father had loved him deeply and sincerely: but — he was gone.
In spite of his heavy sorrow, George was awake to sounds in the distance, the everyday labour of life. The cow-boy was calling to his cows; one of the men, acting for Jim Sanders, was going out with the team. And now there came a butcher, riding up from Barmester, and George knew he had come about some beasts, all unconscious that the master was no longer here to command, or deal with. Work, especially farm work, must go on, although death may have accomplished its mission.
The butcher, riding fast, had nearly reached the gate, and George was turning away to retire indoors, when the unhappy thought came upon him — Who is to see this man? His father no longer there, who must represent him? — must answer comers — must stand in his place? It brought the fact of what had happened more practically before George Ryle’s mind than anything else had done. He stood where he was, instead of turning away. That day he must rise superior to grief, and be useful; must rise above his years in the future, for his step-mother’s sake.
“Good morning, Mr. George,” cried the butcher, as he rode up. “Is the master about?”
“No,” answered George, speaking as steadily as he could. “He will never be about again. He is dead.”
The butcher thought it a boy’s joke. “None of that, young gentleman!” said he, with a laugh. “Where shall I find him?”
“Mr. Cope,” said George, raising his grave face — and its expression struck a chill to the man’s heart— “I should not joke upon the subject of death. My father was attacked by Chattaway’s bull yesterday evening, and has died of the injuries.”
“Lawk-a-mercy!” uttered the startled man. “Attacked by Chattaway’s bull! and — and — died of the injuries! Surely it can’t be so!”
George had turned his face away; the strain was getting too much for him.
“Has Chattaway killed the bull?” was the man’s next question.
“I suppose not.”
“Then he is no man and no gentleman if he don’t do it. If a beast of mine injured a neighbour, I’d stay him from injuring another, no matter what its value. Dear me! Mr. George, I’d rather have heard any news than this.”
George’s head was quite turned away now. The butcher roused himself to think of business. His time was short, for he had to be in the town again before his shop opened for the day.
“I came up about the beasts,” he said. “The master as good as sold ’em to me yesterday; it was only a matter of a few shillings split us. But I’ll give in sooner than not have ‘em. Who is going to carry on the dealings in Mr. Ryle’s place? Who can I speak to?”
“You can see John Pinder,” answered George. “He knows most about things.”
The man guided his horse through the fold-yard, scattering the cocks and hens, and reached the barn. John Pinder came out to him; and George escaped indoors.
It was a sad day. The excitement over, the doctors departed, the gossipers and neighbours dispersed, the village carpenter having come and taken certain measures, the house was left to its monotonous quiet; that distressing quiet which tells upon the spirits. Nora’s voice was subdued, Molly went about on tiptoe. The boys wished it was over; that, and many more days to come. Treve fairly broke bounds about twelve, said he could not bear it, and went out amongst the men. In the afternoon George was summoned upstairs to the chamber of Mrs. Ryle, where she had remained since the morning.
“George, you must go to Barmester,” she said. “I wish to know how Caroline bears the news, poor child! Mr. Benage said he would call and break it to her; but I cannot get her grief out of my head. You can go over in the gig; but don’t stay. Be home by tea-time.”
It is more than probable that George felt the commission as a relief, and he started as soon as the gig was ready. As he went out of the yard, Nora called after him to be careful how he drove. Not that he had never driven before; but Mr. Ryle, or some one else, had always been in the gig with him. Now he was alone; and it brought his loss again more forcibly before him.
