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Chapter XXI - Esther's motive in seeking Mary
"My rest is gone,
My heart is sore,
Peace find I never,
And never more."
--MARGARET'S SONG IN "FAUST."
I must go back a little to explain the motives which caused Esther
to seek an interview with her niece.
The murder had been committed early on Thursday night, and between
then and the dawn of the following day there was ample time for the
news to spread far and wide among all those whose duty, or whose
want, or whose errors, caused them to be abroad in the streets of
Manchester.
Among those who listened to the tale of violence was Esther.
A craving desire to know more took possession of her mind. Far away
as she was from Turner Street, she immediately set off to the scene
of the murder, which was faintly lighted by the grey dawn as she
reached the spot. It was so quiet and still that she could hardly
believe it to be the place. The only vestige of any scuffle or
violence was a trail on the dust, as if somebody had been lying
there, and then been raised by extraneous force. The little birds
were beginning to hop and twitter in the leafless hedge, making the
only sound that was near and distinct. She crossed into the field
where she guessed the murderer to have stood; it was easy of access,
for the worn, stunted hawthorn-hedge had many gaps in it. The
night-smell of bruised grass came up from under her feet, as she
went towards the saw-pit and carpenter's shed which, as I have said
before, were in a corner of the field near the road, and where one
of her informants had told her it was supposed by the police that
the murderer had lurked while waiting for his victim. There was no
sign, however, that any one had been about the place. If the grass
had been bruised or bent where he had trod, it had had enough of the
elasticity of life to raise itself under the dewy influences of
night. She hushed her breath in involuntary awe, but nothing else
told of the violent deed by which a fellow-creature had passed away.
She stood still for a minute, imagining to herself the position of
the parties, guided by the only circumstance which afforded any
evidence, the trailing mark on the dust in the road.
Suddenly (it was before the sun had risen above the horizon) she
became aware of something white in the hedge. All other colours
wore the same murky hue, though the forms of objects were perfectly
distinct. What was it? It could not be a flower;--that, the time
of year made clear. A frozen lump of snow, lingering late in one of
the gnarled tufts of the hedge? She stepped forward to examine. It
proved to be a little piece of stiff writing-paper compressed into a
round shape. She understood it instantly; it was the paper that had
served as wadding for the murderer's gun. Then she had been
standing just where the murderer must have been but a few hours
before; probably (as the rumour had spread through the town,
reaching her ears) one of the poor maddened turn-outs, who hung
about everywhere, with black, fierce looks, as if contemplating some
deed of violence. Her sympathy was all with them, for she had known
what they suffered; and besides this, there was her own individual
dislike of Mr. Carson, and dread of him for Mary's sake. Yet, poor
Mary! Death was a terrible, though sure, remedy for the evil Esther
had dreaded for her; and how would she stand the shock, loving as
her aunt believed her to do? Poor Mary! who would comfort her?
Esther's thoughts began to picture her sorrow, her despair, when the
news of her lover's death should reach her; and she longed to tell
her there might have been a keener grief yet had he lived.
Bright, beautiful came the slanting rays of the morning sun. It was
time for such as she to hide themselves, with the other obscene
things of night, from the glorious light of day, which was only for
the happy. So she turned her steps towards town, still holding the
paper. But in getting over the hedge it encumbered her to hold it
in her clasped hand, and she threw it down. She passed on a few
steps, her thoughts still of Mary, till the idea crossed her mind,
could it (blank as it appeared to be) give any clue to the murderer?
As I said before, her sympathies were all on that side, so she
turned back and picked it up; and then feeling as if in some measure
an accessory, she hid it unexamined in her hand, and hastily passed
out of the street at the opposite end to that by which she had
entered it.
And what do you think she felt, when having walked some distance
from the spot, she dared to open the crushed paper, and saw written
on it Mary Barton's name, and not only that, but the street in which
she lived! True, a letter or two was torn off, but, nevertheless,
there was the name clear to be recognised. And oh! what terrible
thought flashed into her mind; or was it only fancy? But it looked
very like the writing which she had once known well--the writing of
Jem Wilson, who, when she lived at her brother-in-law's, and he was
a near neighbour, had often been employed by her to write her
letters to people, to whom she was ashamed of sending her own
misspelt scrawl. She remembered the wonderful flourishes she had so
much admired in those days, while she sat by dictating, and Jem, in
all the pride of newly-acquired penmanship, used to dazzle her eyes
by extraordinary graces and twirls.
If it were his!
Oh! perhaps it was merely that her head was running so on Mary, that
she was associating every trifle with her. As if only one person
wrote in that flourishing, meandering style!
It was enough to fill her mind to think from what she might have
saved Mary by securing the paper. She would look at it just once
more, and see if some very dense and stupid policeman could have
mistaken the name, or if Mary would certainly have been dragged into
notice in the affair.
No! no one could have mistaken the "ry Barton," and it WAS Jem's
handwriting!
Oh! if it was so, she understood it all, and she had been the cause!
With her violent and unregulated nature, rendered morbid by the
course of life she led, and her consciousness of her degradation,
she cursed herself for the interference which she believed had led
to this; for the information and the warning she had given to Jem,
which had roused him to this murderous action. How could she, the
abandoned and polluted outcast, ever have dared to hope for a
blessing, even on her efforts to do good. The black curse of Heaven
rested on all her doings, were they for good or for evil.
Poor, diseased mind! and there were none to minister to thee!
So she wandered about, too restless to take her usual heavy
morning's sleep, up and down the streets, greedily listening to
every word of the passers-by, and loitering near each group of
talkers, anxious to scrape together every morsel of information, or
conjecture, or suspicion, though without possessing any definite
purpose in all this. And ever and always she clenched the scrap of
paper which might betray so much, until her nails had deeply
indented the palm of her hand; so fearful was she in her nervous
dread, lest unawares she should let it drop.
Towards the middle of the day she could no longer evade the body's
craving want of rest and refreshment; but the rest was taken in a
spirit vault, and the refreshment was a glass of gin.
Then she started up from the stupor she had taken for repose; and
suddenly driven before the gusty impulses of her mind, she pushed
her way to the place where at that very time the police were
bringing the information they had gathered with regard to the
all-engrossing murder.
She listened with painful acuteness of comprehension to dropped
words, and unconnected sentences, the meaning of which became
clearer, and yet more clear to her. Jem was suspected. Jem was
ascertained to be the murderer.
She saw him (although he, absorbed in deep sad thought, saw her
not), she saw him brought handcuffed and guarded out of the coach.
She saw him enter the station--she gasped for breath till he came
out, still handcuffed, and still guarded, to be conveyed to the New
Bailey.
He was the only one who had spoken to her with hope that she might
win her way back to virtue. His words had lingered in her heart
with a sort of call to heaven, like distant Sabbath bells, although
in her despair she had turned away from his voice. He was the only
one who had spoken to her kindly. The murder, shocking though it
was, was an absent, abstract thing, on which her thoughts could not,
and would not dwell: all that was present in her mind was Jem's
danger, and his kindness.
Then Mary came to remembrance. Esther wondered till she was sick of
wondering, in what way she was taking the affair. In some manner it
would be a terrible blow for the poor, motherless girl; with her
dreadful father, too, who was to Esther a sort of accusing angel.
She set off towards the court where Mary lived, to pick up what she
could there of information. But she was ashamed to enter in where
once she had been innocent, and hung about the neighbouring streets,
not daring to question, so she learnt but little; nothing, in fact,
but the knowledge of John Barton's absence from home.
She went up a dark entry to rest her weary limbs on a doorstep and
think. Her elbows on her knees, her face hidden in her hands, she
tried to gather together and arrange her thoughts. But still every
now and then she opened her hand to see if the paper were yet there.
She got up at last. She had formed a plan, and had a course of
action to look forward to that would satisfy one craving desire at
least. The time was long gone by when there was much wisdom or
consistency in her projects.
It was getting late, and that was so much the better. She went to a
pawnshop, and took off her finery in a back room. She was known by
the people, and had a character for honesty, so she had no very
great difficulty in inducing them to let her have a suit of outer
clothes, befitting the wife of a working-man, a black silk bonnet, a
printed gown, a plaid shawl, dirty and rather worn to be sure, but
which had a sort of sanctity to the eyes of the street-walker as
being the appropriate garb of that happy class to which she could
never, never more belong.
She looked at herself in the little glass which hung against the
wall, and sadly shaking her head thought how easy were the duties of
that Eden of innocence from which she was shut out; how she would
work, and toil, and starve, and die, if necessary, for a husband, a
home--for children--but that thought she could not bear; a little
form rose up, stern in its innocence, from the witches' caldron of
her imagination, and she rushed into action again.
You know now how she came to stand by the threshold of Mary's door,
waiting, trembling, until the latch was lifted, and her niece, with
words that spoke of such desolation among the living, fell into her
arms.
She had felt as if some holy spell would prevent her (even as the
unholy Lady Geraldine was prevented, in the abode of Christabel)
from crossing the threshold of that home of her early innocence; and
she had meant to wait for an invitation. But Mary's helpless action
did away with all reluctant feeling, and she bore or dragged her to
her seat, and looked on her bewildered eyes, as, puzzled with the
likeness, which was not identity, she gazed on her aunt's features.
In pursuance of her plan, Esther meant to assume the manners and
character, as she had done the dress, of a mechanic's wife; but
then, to account for her long absence, and her long silence towards
all that ought to have been dear to her, it was necessary that she
should put on an indifference far distant from her heart, which was
loving and yearning, in spite of all its faults. And, perhaps, she
over-acted her part, for certainly Mary felt a kind of repugnance to
the changed and altered aunt, who so suddenly reappeared on the
scene; and it would have cut Esther to the very core, could she have
known how her little darling of former days was feeling towards her.
"You don't remember me, I see, Mary!" she began. "It's a long while
since I left you all, to be sure; and I, many a time, thought of
coming to see you, and--and your father. But I live so far off, and
am always so busy, I cannot do just what I wish. You recollect aunt
Esther, don't you, Mary?"
"Are you Aunt Hetty?" asked Mary faintly, still looking at the face
which was so different from the old recollections of her aunt's
fresh dazzling beauty.
"Yes! I am Aunt Hetty. Oh! it's so long since I heard that name,"
sighing forth the thoughts it suggested; then, recovering herself,
and striving after the hard character she wished to assume, she
continued: "And to-day I heard a friend of yours, and of mine too,
long ago, was in trouble, and I guessed you would be in sorrow, so I
thought I would just step this far and see you."
Mary's tears flowed afresh, but she had no desire to open her heart
to her strangely-found aunt, who had, by her own confession, kept
aloof from and neglected them for so many years. Yet she tried to
feel grateful for kindness (however late) from any one, and wished
to be civil. Moreover, she had a strong disinclination to speak on
the terrible subject uppermost in her mind.
So, after a pause, she said--
"Thank you. I dare say you mean very kind. Have you had a long
walk? I'm so sorry," said she, rising with a sudden thought, which
was as suddenly checked by recollection, "but I've nothing to eat in
the house, and I'm sure you must be hungry, after your walk."
For Mary concluded that certainly her aunt's residence must be far
away on the other side of the town, out of sight or hearing. But,
after all, she did not think much about her; her heart was so
aching-full of other things, that all besides seemed like a dream.
She received feelings and impressions from her conversation with her
aunt, but did not, could not, put them together, or think or argue
about them.
And Esther! How scanty had been her food for days and weeks, her
thinly-covered bones and pale lips might tell, but her words should
never reveal!
So, with a little unreal laugh, she replied--
"Oh! Mary, my dear! don't talk about eating. We've the best of
everything, and plenty of it, for my husband is in good work. I'd
such a supper before I came out. I couldn't touch a morsel if you
had it."
Her words shot a strange pang through Mary's heart. She had always
remembered her aunt's loving and unselfish disposition; how was it
changed, if, living in plenty, she had never thought it worth while
to ask after her relations who were all but starving! She shut up
her heart instinctively against her aunt.
And all the time poor Esther was swallowing her sobs, and over-
acting her part, and controlling herself more than she had done for
many a long day, in order that her niece might not be shocked and
revolted, by the knowledge of what her aunt had become--a
prostitute; an outcast.
She had longed to open her wretched, wretched heart, so hopeless, so
abandoned by all living things, to one who had loved her once; and
yet she refrained, from dread of the averted eye, the altered voice,
the internal loathing, which she feared such disclosure might
create. She would go straight to the subject of the day. She could
not tarry long, for she felt unable to support the character she had
assumed for any length of time.
They sat by the little round table, facing each other. The candle
was placed right between them, and Esther moved it in order to have
a clearer view of Mary's face, so that she might read her emotions,
and ascertain her interests.
Then she began--
"It's a bad business, I'm afraid, this of Mr. Carson's murder."
Mary winced a little.
"I hear Jem Wilson is taken up for it."
Mary covered her eyes with her hands, as if to shade them from the
light, and Esther herself, less accustomed to self-command, was
getting too much agitated for calm observation of another.
"I was taking a walk near Turner Street, and I went to see the
spot," continued Esther, "and, as luck would have it, I spied this
bit of paper in the hedge," producing the precious piece still
folded in her hand. "It has been used as wadding for the gun, I
reckon; indeed, that's clear enough, from the shape it's crammed
into. I was sorry for the murderer, whoever he might be (I didn't
then know of Jem's being suspected), and I thought I would never
leave a thing about as might help, ever so little, to convict him;
the police are so 'cute about straws. So I carried it a little way,
and then I opened it and saw your name, Mary."
Mary took her hands away from her eyes, and looked with surprise at
her aunt's face, as she uttered these words. She WAS kind after
all, for was she not saving her from being summoned, and from being
questioned and examined; a thing to be dreaded above all others:
as she felt sure that her unwilling answers, frame them how she
might, would add to the suspicions against Jem; her aunt was indeed
kind, to think of what would spare her this.
Esther went on, without noticing Mary's look. The very action of
speaking was so painful to her, and so much interrupted by the hard,
raking little cough, which had been her constant annoyance for
months, that she was too much engrossed by the physical difficulty
of utterance, to be a very close observer.
"There could be no mistake if they had found it. Look at your name,
together with the very name of this court! And in Jem's handwriting
too, or I'm much mistaken. Look, Mary!"
And now she did watch her.
Mary took the paper and flattened it; then suddenly stood stiff up,
with irrepressible movement, as if petrified by some horror abruptly
disclosed; her face, strung and rigid; her lips compressed tight, to
keep down some rising exclamation. She dropped on her seat, as
suddenly as if the braced muscles had in an instant given way. But
she spoke no word.
"It is his handwriting--isn't it?" asked Esther, though Mary's
manner was almost confirmation enough.
"You will not tell. You never will tell?" demanded Mary, in a tone
so sternly earnest, as almost to be threatening.
"Nay, Mary," said Esther, rather reproachfully, "I am not so bad as
that. O Mary, you cannot think I would do that, whatever I may be."
The tears sprang to her eyes at the idea that she was suspected of
being one who would help to inform against an old friend.
Mary caught her sad and upbraiding look.
"No! I know you would not tell, aunt. I don't know what I say, I am
so shocked. But say you will not tell. Do."
"No, indeed I willn't tell, come what may."
Mary sat still looking at the writing, and turning the paper round
with careful examination, trying to hope, but her very fears belying
her hopes.
"I thought you cared for the young man that's murdered," observed
Esther, half-aloud; but feeling that she could not mistake this
strange interest in the suspected murderer, implied by Mary's
eagerness to screen him from anything which might strengthen
suspicion against him. She had come, desirous to know the extent of
Mary's grief for Mr. Carson, and glad of the excuse afforded her by
the important scrap of paper. Her remark about its being Jem's
handwriting, she had, with this view of ascertaining Mary's state of
feeling, felt to be most imprudent the instant after she had uttered
it; but Mary's anxiety that she should not tell was too great, and
too decided, to leave a doubt as to her interest for Jem. She grew
more and more bewildered, and her dizzy head refused to reason.
Mary never spoke. She held the bit of paper firmly, determined to
retain possession of it, come what might; and anxious, and
impatient, for her aunt to go. As she sat, her face bore a likeness
to Esther's dead child.
"You are so like my little girl, Mary!" said Esther, weary of the
one subject on which she could get no satisfaction, and recurring,
with full heart, to the thought of the dead.
Mary looked up. Her aunt had children, then. That was all the idea
she received. No faint imagination of the love and the woe of that
poor creature crossed her mind, or she would have taken her, all
guilty and erring, to her bosom, and tried to bind up the broken
heart. No! it was not to be. Her aunt had children, then; and she
was on the point of putting some question about them, but before it
could be spoken another thought turned it aside, and she went back
to her task of unravelling the mystery of the paper, and the
handwriting. Oh! how she wished her aunt would go!
As if, according to the believers in mesmerism, the intenseness of
her wish gave her power over another, although the wish was
unexpressed, Esther felt herself unwelcome, and that her absence was
desired.
She felt this some time before she could summon up resolution to go.
She was so much disappointed in this longed-for, dreaded interview
with Mary; she had wished to impose upon her with her tale of
married respectability, and yet she had yearned and craved for
sympathy in her real lot. And she had imposed upon her well. She
should perhaps be glad of it afterwards; but her desolation of hope
seemed for the time redoubled. And she must leave the old
dwelling-place, whose very walls, and flags, dingy and sordid as
they were, had a charm for her. Must leave the abode of poverty,
for the more terrible abodes of vice. She must--she would go.
"Well, good-night, Mary. That bit of paper is safe enough with you,
I see. But you made me promise I would not tell about it, and you
must promise me to destroy it before you sleep."
"I promise," said Mary hoarsely, but firmly. "Then you are going?"
"Yes. Not if you wish me to stay. Not if I could be of any comfort
to you, Mary"; catching at some glimmering hope.
"Oh no," said Mary, anxious to be alone. "Your husband will be
wondering where you are. Some day you must tell me all about
yourself. I forget what your name is?"
"Fergusson," said Esther sadly.
"Mrs. Fergusson," repeated Mary half unconsciously. "And where did
you say you lived?"
"I never did say," muttered Esther; then aloud, "In Angel's Meadow,
145, Nicholas Street."
"145, Nicholas Street, Angel Meadow. I shall remember."
As Esther drew her shawl around her, and prepared to depart, a
thought crossed Mary's mind that she had been cold and hard in her
manner towards one, who had certainly meant to act kindly in
bringing her the paper (that dread, terrible piece of paper!) and
thus saving her from--she could not rightly think how much, or how
little she was spared. So desirous of making up for her previous
indifferent manner, she advanced to kiss her aunt before her
departure.
But, to her surprise, her aunt pushed her off with a frantic kind of
gesture, and saying the words--
"Not me. You must never kiss me. You!"
She rushed into the outer darkness of the street, and there wept
long and bitterly.
Content of Chapter XXI - Esther's motive in seeking Mary. [Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell's novel: Mary Barton]
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Read next: Chapter XXII - Mary's efforts to prove an alibi.
Read previous: Chapter XX - Mary's dream--and the awakening.
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