Eugene Aram — Complete. Эдвард Бульвер-Литтон
and even her stooping posture did not conceal a height greatly above the common stature, though gaunt and shrivelled with years and poverty. It was a form and face that might have recalled at once the celebrated description of Otway, on a part of which we have already unconsciously encroached, and the remaining part of which we shall wholly borrow.
“—On her crooked shoulders had she wrapped The tattered remnants of an old stript hanging, That served to keep her carcase from the cold, So there was nothing of a piece about her. Her lower weeds were all o’er coarsely patched With different coloured rags, black, red, white, yellow, And seemed to speak variety of wretchedness.”
“See,” said Lester, “one of the eyesores of our village, (I might say) the only discontented person.”
“What! Dame Darkmans!” said Ellinor, quickly. “Ah! let us turn back. I hate to encounter that old woman; there is something so evil and savage in her manner of talk—and look, how she rates that poor girl, whom she has dragged or decoyed to assist her!”
Aram looked curiously on the old hag. “Poverty,” said he, “makes some humble, but more malignant; is it not want that grafts the devil on this poor woman’s nature? Come, let us accost her—I like conferring with distress.”
“It is hard labour this?” said the Student gently.
The old woman looked up askant—the music of the voice that addressed her sounded harsh on her ear.
“Ay, ay!” she answered. “You fine gentlefolks can know what the poor suffer; ye talk and ye talk, but ye never assist.”
“Say not so, Dame,” said Lester; “did I not send you but yesterday bread and money? and when do you ever look up at the Hall without obtaining relief?”
“But the bread was as dry as a stick,” growled the hag: “and the money, what was it? will it last a week? Oh, yes! Ye think as much of your doits and mites, as if ye stripped yourselves of a comfort to give it to us. Did ye have a dish less—a ‘tato less, the day ye sent me—your charity I ‘spose ye calls it? Och! fie! But the Bible’s the poor cretur’s comfort.”
“I am glad to hear you say that, Dame,” said the good-natured Lester; “and I forgive every thing else you have said, on account of that one sentence.”
The old woman dropped the sticks she had just gathered, and glowered at the speaker’s benevolent countenance with a malicious meaning in her dark eyes.
“An’ ye do? Well, I’m glad I please ye there. Och! yes! the Bible’s a mighty comfort; for it says as much that the rich man shall not inter the kingdom of Heaven! There’s a truth for you, that makes the poor folk’s heart chirp like a cricket—ho! ho! I sits by the imbers of a night, and I thinks and thinks as how I shall see you all burning; and ye’ll ask me for a drop o’ water, and I shall laugh thin from my pleasant seat with the angels. Och—it’s a book for the poor that!”
The sisters shuddered. “And you think then that with envy, malice, and all uncharitableness at your heart, you are certain of Heaven? For shame! Pluck the mote from your own eye!”
“What sinnifies praching? Did not the Blessed Saviour come for the poor? Them as has rags and dry bread here will be ixalted in the nixt world; an’ if we poor folk have malice as ye calls it, whose fault’s that? What do ye tache us? Eh?—answer me that. Ye keeps all the larning an’ all the other fine things to yoursel’, and then ye scould, and thritten, and hang us, ‘cause we are not as wise as you. Och! there is no jistice in the Lamb, if Heaven is not made for us; and the iverlasting Hell, with its brimstone and fire, and its gnawing an’ gnashing of teeth, an’ its theirst, an’ its torture, and its worm that niver dies, for the like o’ you.”
“Come! come away,” said Ellinor, pulling her father’s arm.
“And if,” said Aram, pausing, “if I were to say to you,—name your want and it shall be fulfilled, would you have no charity for me also?”
“Umph,” returned the hag, “ye are the great scolard; and they say ye knows what no one else do. Till me now,” and she approached, and familiarly, laid her bony finger on the student’s arm; “till me,—have ye iver, among other fine things, known poverty?”
“I have, woman!” said Aram, sternly.
“Och ye have thin! And did ye not sit and gloat, and eat up your oun heart, an’ curse the sun that looked so gay, an’ the winged things that played so blithe-like, an’ scowl at the rich folk that niver wasted a thought on ye? till me now, your honour, till me!”
And the crone curtesied with a mock air of beseeching humility.
“I never forgot, even in want, the love due to my fellow-sufferers; for, woman, we all suffer,—the rich and the poor: there are worse pangs than those of want!”
“Ye think there be, do ye? that’s a comfort, umph! Well, I’ll till ye now, I feel a rispict for you, that I don’t for the rest on ‘em; for your face does not insult me with being cheary like their’s yonder; an’ I have noted ye walk in the dusk with your eyes down and your arms crossed; an’ I have said,—that man I do not hate, somehow, for he has something dark at his heart like me!”
“The lot of earth is woe,” answered Aram calmly, yet shrinking back from the crone’s touch; “judge we charitably, and act we kindly to each other. There—this money is not much, but it will light your hearth and heap your table without toil, for some days at least!”
“Thank your honour: an’ what think you I’ll do with the money?”
“What?”
“Drink, drink, drink!” cried the hag fiercely; “there’s nothing like drink for the poor, for thin we fancy oursels what we wish, and,” sinking her voice into a whisper, “I thinks thin that I have my foot on the billies of the rich folks, and my hands twisted about their intrails, and I hear them shriek, and—thin I’m happy!”
“Go home!” said Aram, turning away, “and open the Book of life with other thoughts.”
The little party proceeded, and, looking back, Lester saw the old woman gaze after them, till a turn in the winding valley hid her from his sight.
“That is a strange person, Aram; scarcely a favourable specimen of the happy English peasant;” said Lester, smiling.
“Yet they say,” added Madeline, “that she was not always the same perverse and hateful creature she is now.”
“Ay,” said Aram, “and what then is her history?”
“Why,” replied Madeline, slightly blushing to find herself made the narrator of a story, “some forty years ago this woman, so gaunt and hideous now, was the beauty of the village. She married an Irish soldier whose regiment passed through Grassdale, and was heard of no more till about ten years back, when she returned to her native place, the discontented, envious, altered being you now see her.”
“She is not reserved in regard to her past life,” said Lester. “She is too happy to seize the attention of any one to whom she can pour forth her dark and angry confidence. She saw her husband, who was afterwards dismissed the service, a strong, powerful man, a giant of his tribe, pine and waste, inch by inch, from mere physical want, and at last literally die from hunger. It happened that they had settled in the country in which her husband was born, and in that county, those frequent famines which are the scourge of Ireland were for two years especially severe. You may note, that the old woman has a strong vein of coarse eloquence at her command, perhaps acquired in (for it partakes of the natural character of) the country in which she lived so long; and it would literally thrill you with horror to hear her descriptions of the misery and destitution that she witnessed, and amidst which her husband breathed his last. Out of four children, not one survives. One, an infant, died within a week of the father; two sons were executed, one at the age