"ElizabethGaskell-LizzieLeigh" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gaskell Elizabeth C)

LIZZIE LEIGH




CHAPTER I.




When Death is present in a household on a Christmas Day, the very
contrast between the time as it now is, and the day as it has often
been, gives a poignancy to sorrow--a more utter blankness to the
desolation. James Leigh died just as the far-away bells of Rochdale
Church were ringing for morning service on Christmas Day, 1836. A
few minutes before his death, he opened his already glazing eyes, and
made a sign to his wife, by the faint motion of his lips, that he had
yet something to say. She stooped close down, and caught the broken
whisper, "I forgive her, Annie! May God forgive me!"

"Oh, my love, my dear! only get well, and I will never cease showing
my thanks for those words. May God in heaven bless thee for saying
them. Thou'rt not so restless, my lad! may be--Oh, God!"

For even while she spoke he died.

They had been two-and-twenty years man and wife; for nineteen of
those years their life had been as calm and happy as the most perfect
uprightness on the one side, and the most complete confidence and
loving submission on the other, could make it. Milton's famous line
might have been framed and hung up as the rule of their married life,
for he was truly the interpreter, who stood between God and her; she
would have considered herself wicked if she had ever dared even to
think him austere, though as certainly as he was an upright man, so
surely was he hard, stern, and inflexible. But for three years the
moan and the murmur had never been out of her heart; she had rebelled
against her husband as against a tyrant, with a hidden, sullen
rebellion, which tore up the old landmarks of wifely duty and
affection, and poisoned the fountains whence gentlest love and
reverence had once been for ever springing.

But those last blessed words replaced him on his throne in her heart,
and called out penitent anguish for all the bitter estrangement of
later years. It was this which made her refuse all the entreaties of
her sons, that she would see the kind-hearted neighbours, who called
on their way from church, to sympathize and condole. No! she would
stay with the dead husband that had spoken tenderly at last, if for
three years he had kept silence; who knew but what, if she had only
been more gentle and less angrily reserved he might have relented
earlier--and in time?