Part 6 (1/2)
The facts were as the expectations. Andrew King brought forward a young, timid and unknown girl as his wife. By that name he led her up to his grandfather, then to his mother; as such he explained her to his neighbours, including (though not by name) Bessie Prawle, who had undoubtedly hoped to occupy that position herself.
Old King, overcome with joy at seeing his boy alive and well, and dazed, probably, by events, put his hands upon the girl's head and blessed her after the patriarchal fas.h.i.+on there persisting. He seems to have taken canonical marriage for granted, though n.o.body else did, and though a moment's reflection, had he been capable of so much, would have shown him that that could not be. The neighbours were too well disposed to the family to raise any doubts or objections; Bessie Prawle was sullen and quiet; only Miranda King seems to have been equal to the occasion. She, as if in complete possession of facts which satisfied every question, received the girl as an equal. She did not kiss her or touch her, but looked deeply into her eyes for a long s.p.a.ce of time, and took from her again an equally searching regard; then, turning to her father-in-law and the company at large, she said, ”This is begun, and will be done. He is like his father before him.”
To that oracular utterance old King, catching probably but the last sentence, replied, ”And he couldn't do better, my child.” He meant no more than a testimony to his daughter-in-law. Mrs. King's observations, coupled with that, nevertheless, went far to give credit to the alleged marriage.
The girl, so far, had said nothing whatever, though she had been addressed with more than one rough but kindly compliment on her youth and good looks. And now Andrew King explained that she was dumb.
Consternation took the strange form of jocular approval of his discretion in selecting a wife who could never nag him--but it was consternation none the less. The mystery was felt to be deeper; there was nothing for it now but to call in the aid of the parish priest--”the minister,” as they called him--and this was done. By the time he had arrived, Miranda King had taken the girl into the cottage, and the young husband and his grandfather had got the neighbours to disperse. Bessie Prawle, breathing threatenings and slaughter, had withdrawn herself.
Mr. Robson, a quiet sensible man of nearer sixty than fifty years, sat in the cottage, hearing all that his paris.h.i.+oners could tell him and using his eyes. He saw the centre-piece of all surmise, a shrinking, pale slip of a girl, by the look of her not more than fifteen or sixteen years old. She was not emaciated by any means, seemed to be well nourished, and was quite as vigorous as any child of that age who could have been pitted against her. Her surroundings cowed her, he judged. To Dryhope she was a stranger, a foreigner; to her Dryhope and the Dryhopedale folk were perilous matter. Her general appearance was that of a child who had never had anything but ill-usage; she flinched at every sudden movement, and followed one about with her great unintelligent eyes, as if she was trying to comprehend what they showed her. Her features were regular and delicate; her brows broad and eyebrows finely arched, her chin full, her neck slim, her hands and feet narrow and full of what fanciers call ”breed.” Her hair was very long and fine, dark brown with gleams of gold; her eyes were large, grey in colour, but, as I have said, unintelligent, like an animal's, which to us always seem unintelligent. I should have mentioned, for Mr. Robson noticed it at once, that her hair was unconfined, and that, so far as he could make out, she wore but a single garment--a sleeveless frock, confined at the waist and reaching to her knees. It was of the colour of unbleached flax and of a coa.r.s.e web. Her form showed through, and the faint flush of her skin. She was a finely made girl. Her legs and feet were bare. Immodest as such an appearance would have been in one of the village maids, he did not feel it to be so with her. Her look was so entirely foreign to his experience that there was no standard of comparison. Everything about her seemed to him to be quite what one would have expected, until one came, so to speak, in touch with her soul. That, if it lay behind her inscrutable, sightless and dumb eyes, betrayed her. There was no hint of it. Human in form, visibly and tangibly human, no soul sat in her great eyes that a man could discern. That, however, is not now the point. Rather it is that, to all appearance a modest and beautiful girl, she was remarkably undressed. It was inconceivable that a modest and beautiful girl could so present herself, and yet a modest and beautiful girl she was.
Mr. Robson put it to himself this way. There are birds--for instance, jays, kingfishers, goldfinches--which are, taken absolutely, extremely brilliant in colouring. Yet they do not jar, are not obtrusive. So it was with her. Her dress was, perhaps, taken absolutely, indecorous.
Upon her it looked at once seemly and beautiful. Upon Bessie Prawle it would have been glaring; but one had to dissect it before one could discover any fault with it upon its wearer. She was very pale, even to the lips, which were full and parted, as if she must breathe through her mouth. He noticed immediately the shortness of her breath. It was very distressing, and after a little while induced the same thing in himself. And not in him only, but I can fancy that the whole group of them sitting round her where she was crouched against Miranda King's knees, were panting away like steam-engines before they had done with her. While Mr. Robson was there Miranda never took her arm off her shoulder for a moment; but the girl's eyes were always fixed upon Andrew, who called himself her husband, unless her apprehensions were directly called elsewhere. In that case she would look in the required direction for the fraction of a second, terrified and ready, as you may say, to die at a movement, and then, her fears at rest, back to her husband's face.
Mr. Robson's first business was to examine Andrew King, a perfectly honest, well-behaved lad, whom he had known from his cradle. He was candid--up to a point. He had found her on the top of Knapp Fell, he said; she had been with others, who ill-treated her. What others?
Others of her sort. Fairies, he said, who lived up there. He pressed him about this. Fairies? Did he really believe in such beings? Like all country people he spoke about these things with the utmost difficulty, and when confronted by worldly wisdom, became dogged. He said how could he help it when here was one? Mr. Robson told him that he was begging the question, but he looked very blank. To the surprise of the minister, old King--old George King, the grandfather--had no objections to make to the suggestion of fairies on Knapp Fell. He could not say, there was no telling; Knapp was a known place; strange things were recorded of the forest. Miranda, his daughter-in-law, was always a self-contained woman, with an air about her of being forewarned. He instanced her, and the minister asked her several questions. Being pressed, she finally said, ”Sir, my son is as likely right as wrong. We must all make up our own minds.” There that matter had to be left.
Andrew said that he had followed the fairies from the tarn on Lammer Fell into Knapp Forest. They had run away from him, taking this girl of his, as he supposed, with them. He had followed them because he meant to have her. They knew that, so had run. Why did he want her? He said that he had seen her before. When? Oh, long ago--when he had been up there alone. He had seen her face among the trees for a moment.
They had been hurting her; she looked at him, she was frightened, but couldn't cry out--only look and ask. He had never forgotten her; her looks had called him often, and he had kept his eyes wide open. Now, when he had found her again, he determined to have her. And at last, he said, he had got her. He had had to fight for her, for they had been about him like h.e.l.l-cats and had jumped at him as if they would tear him to pieces, and screamed and hissed like cats. But when he had got her in his arms they had all screamed together, once--like a howling wind--and had flown away.
What next? Here he became obstinate, as if foreseeing what was to be.
What next? He had married her. Married her! How could he marry a fairy on the top of Knapp Fell? Was there a church there, by chance? Had a licence been handy? ”Let me see her lines, Andrew,” Mr. Robson had said somewhat sternly in conclusion. His answer had been to lift up her left hand and show the thin third finger. It carried a ring, made of plaited rush. ”I put that on her,” he said, ”and said all the words over her out of the book.” ”And you think you have married her, Andrew?” It was put to him _ex cathedra_. He grew very red and was silent; presently he said, ”Well, sir, I do think so. But she's not my wife yet, if that's what you mean.” The good gentleman felt very much relieved. It was satisfactory to him that he could still trust his worthy young paris.h.i.+oner.
Entirely under the influence of Miranda King, he found the family unanimous for a real wedding. To that there were two objections to make. He could not put up the banns of a person without a name, and would not marry a person unbaptised. Now, to baptise an adult something more than sponsors are requisite; there must be voluntary a.s.sent to the doctrines of religion by the postulant. In this case, how to be obtained? He saw no way, since it was by no means plain to him that the girl could understand a word that was said. He left the family to talk it over among themselves, saying, as he went out of the door, that his confidence in their principles was so strong that he was sure they would sanction no step which would lead the two young people away from the church door.
In the morning Miranda King came to him with a report that matters had been arranged and only needed his sanction. ”I can trust my son, and see him take her with a good conscience,” she told him. ”She's not one of his people, but she's one of mine; and what I have done she can do, and is willing to do.”
The clergyman was puzzled. ”What do you mean by that, Mrs. King?” he asked her. ”What are _your people_? How do they differ from mine, or your husband's?”
She hesitated. ”Well, sir, in this way. She hasn't got your tongue, nor my son's tongue.”
”She has none at all,” said the minister; but Miranda replied, ”She can talk without her tongue.”
”Yes, my dear,” he said, ”but I cannot.”
”But I can,” was her answer; ”she can talk to me--and will talk to you; but not yet. She's dumb for a season, she's struck so. My son will give her back her tongue--by-and-by.”
He was much interested. He asked Miranda to tell him who had struck her dumb. For a long time she would not answer. ”We don't name him--it's not lawful. He that has the power--the Master--I can go no nearer.” He urged her to openness, got her at last to mention ”The King of the Wood.” The King of the Wood! There she stuck, and nothing he could say could move her from that name, The King of the Wood.
He left it so, knowing his people, and having other things to ask about. What tongue or speech had the respectable, the staid Miranda King in common with the scared waif? To that she answered that she could not tell him; but that it was certain they could understand each other. How? ”By looks,” she said, and added scornfully, ”she's not the kind that has to clatter with her tongue to have speech with her kindred.”
Miranda, then, was a kinswoman! He showed his incredulity, and the woman flushed. ”See here, Mr. Robson,” she said, ”I am of the sea, and she of the fell, but we are the same nation. We are not of yours, but you can make us so. Directly I saw her I knew what she was; and so did she know me. How? By the eyes and understanding. I felt who she was.
As she is now so was I once. As I am now so will she be. I'll answer for her; I'm here to do it. When once I'd followed my man I never looked back; no more will she. The woman obeys the man--that's the law. If a girl of your people was taken with a man of mine she'd lose her speech and forsake her home and ways. That's the law all the world over. G.o.d Almighty's self, if He were a woman, would do the same. He couldn't help it. The law is His; but He made it so sure that not Himself could break it.”
”What law do you mean?” she was asked. She said, ”The law of life. The woman follows the man.”
This proposition he was not prepared to deny, and the end of it was that Mr. Robson baptised the girl, taking Miranda for G.o.dmother.
Mabilla they called her by her sponsor's desire, ”Mabilla By-the-Wood,” and as such she was published and married. You may be disposed to blame him for lightness of conscience, but I take leave to tell you that he had had the cure of souls in Dryhope for five-and-thirty years. He claimed on that score to know his people.
The more he knew of them, the less he was able to question the lore of such an one as Miranda King. And he might remind you that Mabilla King is alive to this hour, a wife and mother of children. That is a fact, and it is also a fact, as I am about to tell you, that she had a hard fight to win such peace.