THE BED UNTREASURED.
IT was a merry evening at Haworth House. William smoked his pipe in the kitchen chimney-nook, for his half-hour, which grew to twice as long; and quaint song and dance made the hour hilarious, pretty, long remembered.
All is over now. He is in his study. The Dutch clock, in the firelight, ticks briskly; and its friendly face glows kindly over the young man’s romantic dreams of the Robin Hood life that is before him, with his nutbrown maid. The passion so sublime, the scenery so wild — all that is so true and yet so visionary —
“All that time has disenchanted.”
All the house, but this room, is dark now. In a little time more he, too, is in his bed, and fast asleep. Deep in the night comes a dream. How it began — what it was about — he forgets. Only he hears in it the wild song: —
“The hawthorn-tree
Is dear to me,
The elver-stone likewise —
The lonely air
That lingers there,
And thought, that never dies.”
The distant song, in his dream, sounded clear and sad. He started up, listening, with a beating heart. The notes seemed still in his ear. But the night-air was silent. The scenery of his dream had flown, and there was darkness only when he tried to recall it. It was as if he had dreamed only of a sweet voice issuing from darkness.
He sighed deeply, listening on. An unaccountable melancholy was heavy at his heart — that pure deep melancholy of a farewell in childhood, that hardly ever returns in after-life.
Yet, why should it last? All was a dream. Nothing is changed. And so, after a while, he falls asleep again, and no dream comes.
Early he awakes, and is out among the trees in the morning air, with the restlessness of a lover. All his future is sweet with the opening flowers, and sparkles in the morning sun, and rustles with the freedom of the forest.
But that morning a change is to befall him.
He is now back again in his study; and at some time past nine o’clock, old Martha comes in, in a great taking, and stands to harangue him without closing the door. Her jolly old face is pale; she gesticulates indignantly, and is in a great excitement.
What she had to tell was this: Euphan, the girl, had totally disappeared. It was no accidentally late ramble in the fields or woodlands. The red bag, with the things she had brought with her, was gone; her gray cloak, which she never took in her walks with her, was gone also. She had made her bed, and the forsaken room was neat as ever, and the flowers stood in the glass on the little table beside the window. She must have visited the bedside of Mall, for some silver in a little bit of blue silk was pinned to the cover of her pillow, and a pretty little carved ivory needlecase, that Martha Gillyflower used to admire, was found tied round with a bit of silk ribbon in a bow, and in like manner pinned over old Martha’s head. The hall-door and back-door were undisturbed; but the side-door, that opened on what was called the meadow, was unbarred, and through it she had gone.
William Haworth stands before her, like a ghost, speechless — his face ashy-white. For a long time he can’t believe the story, and she has to repeat it over and over. Still he can’t believe it — won’t believe it.
He stalks by old Martha’s side from room to room, to visit the evidences of the flight, in dumb half-credulous panic. Old Martha is at his elbow, denouncing, in her grim northern dialect, the ingratitude of the lass who has turned her back on her best friends without a “God-b’-wi’- ye,” and “out o’ window wi’ her like a bird, and, God knows, none but a daffy would wish her back, the graceless lass!”
“She’s gone!” said William, wildly. “My God! why didn’t you look after her? She’s gone! — you’ve let her go! I shall never see her again; and I charge you with it all!”
He shook his hand in the air distractedly, as if he could have cursed her; and he looked so scared and furious that Martha could not “find,” as they say, “her tongue.” She stared at him, with her mouth agape, for the second that he stood thus — and then he was gone, and the hall-door clapped after him; and when she had recovered breath, she said: —
“Agoy! there’s a rageous lad for ye! Here’s a clitter-clatter! An’ all this coil, an’ rampin’ an’ rearin’, acos a firligig lass like that takes the road by night, and off to seek aunters, like that! Hev I bin winkin’ all this time, en Willie in love wi’ the lass! Who’d a’ thought they wor so sly! Weel! I say, he shud nae hev made that undacent hirdum-durdum; she’s a graceless lass, howe’er it be. But I sudna ca’ her a firligig; she’s nane o’ that lids. Na — na, puir tiling! she was as harmless, and had as many tricks, as a kittling,” she continued, softening. “Bonny and winsome she was. I could a’most wimple like a child — but, oh! she’ll come back — she could not do so — she’ll come again.”
So old Martha — excited and disquieted — ruminated, thinking sometimes one thing, and sometimes another. Sometimes her anger was kindled against Euphan, who seemed in her eyes an artful “hizzy” who had ensnared the affections of the Squire of Haworth; and sometimes she fancied that she had flown to prevent her losing her heart to a gentleman quite out of her rank; and sometimes she thought only of the change, and how the hour would be dull without Euphan.