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Half a Life-Time Ago By: Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865) |
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by Elizabeth Gaskell
CHAPTER I. Half a life time ago, there lived in one of the Westmoreland dales a
single woman, of the name of Susan Dixon. She was owner of the small
farm house where she resided, and of some thirty or forty acres of
land by which it was surrounded. She had also an hereditary right to
a sheep walk, extending to the wild fells that overhang Blea Tarn.
In the language of the country she was a Stateswoman. Her house is
yet to be seen on the Oxenfell road, between Skelwith and Coniston.
You go along a moorland track, made by the carts that occasionally
came for turf from the Oxenfell. A brook babbles and brattles by the
wayside, giving you a sense of companionship, which relieves the deep
solitude in which this way is usually traversed. Some miles on this
side of Coniston there is a farmstead a gray stone house, and a
square of farm buildings surrounding a green space of rough turf, in
the midst of which stands a mighty, funereal umbrageous yew, making a
solemn shadow, as of death, in the very heart and centre of the light
and heat of the brightest summer day. On the side away from the
house, this yard slopes down to a dark brown pool, which is supplied
with fresh water from the overflowings of a stone cistern, into which
some rivulet of the brook before mentioned continually and
melodiously falls bubbling. The cattle drink out of this cistern.
The household bring their pitchers and fill them with drinking water
by a dilatory, yet pretty, process. The water carrier brings with
her a leaf of the hound's tongue fern, and, inserting it in the
crevice of the gray rock, makes a cool, green spout for the sparkling
stream. The house is no specimen, at the present day, of what it was in the
lifetime of Susan Dixon. Then, every small diamond pane in the
windows glittered with cleanliness. You might have eaten off the
floor; you could see yourself in the pewter plates and the polished
oaken awmry, or dresser, of the state kitchen into which you entered.
Few strangers penetrated further than this room. Once or twice,
wandering tourists, attracted by the lonely picturesqueness of the
situation, and the exquisite cleanliness of the house itself, made
their way into this house place, and offered money enough (as they
thought) to tempt the hostess to receive them as lodgers. They would
give no trouble, they said; they would be out rambling or sketching
all day long; would be perfectly content with a share of the food
which she provided for herself; or would procure what they required
from the Waterhead Inn at Coniston. But no liberal sum no fair
words moved her from her stony manner, or her monotonous tone of
indifferent refusal. No persuasion could induce her to show any more
of the house than that first room; no appearance of fatigue procured
for the weary an invitation to sit down and rest; and if one more
bold and less delicate did so without being asked, Susan stood by,
cold and apparently deaf, or only replying by the briefest
monosyllables, till the unwelcome visitor had departed. Yet those
with whom she had dealings, in the way of selling her cattle or her
farm produce, spoke of her as keen after a bargain a hard one to
have to do with; and she never spared herself exertion or fatigue, at
market or in the field, to make the most of her produce. She led the
hay makers with her swift, steady rake, and her noiseless evenness of
motion. She was about among the earliest in the market, examining
samples of oats, pricing them, and then turning with grim
satisfaction to her own cleaner corn. She was served faithfully and long by those who were rather her
fellow labourers than her servants. She was even and just in her
dealings with them. If she was peculiar and silent, they knew her,
and knew that she might be relied on. Some of them had known her
from her childhood; and deep in their hearts was an unspoken almost
unconscious pity for her, for they knew her story, though they never
spoke of it... Continue reading book >>
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