Mary Barton Page #52

Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life is the first novel by English author Elizabeth Gaskell, published in 1848. The story is set in the English city of Manchester between 1839 and 1842, and deals with the difficulties faced by the Victorian working class.

• Novel

								

him by which Mary might be guarded and saved.

All these thoughts had passed through her mind while yet she was in
prison; so when she was turned out, her purpose was clear, and she
did not feel her desolation of freedom as she would otherwise have
done.

That night she stationed herself early near the foundry where she
knew Jem worked; he stayed later than usual, being detained by some
arrangements for the morrow. She grew tired and impatient; many
workmen had come out of the door in the long, dead, brick wall, and
eagerly had she peered into their faces, deaf to all insult or curse.
He must have gone home early; one more turn in the street, and she
would go.

During that turn he came out, and in the quiet of that street of
workshops and warehouses, she directly heard his steps. Now her heart
failed her for an instant; but still she was not daunted from her
purpose, painful as its fulfilment was sure to be. She laid her hand
on his arm. As she expected, after a momentary glance at the person
who thus endeavoured to detain him, he made an effort to shake it
off, and pass on. But trembling as she was, she had provided against
this by a firm and unusual grasp.

"You must listen to me, Jem Wilson," she said, with almost an accent
of command.

"Go away, missis; I've nought to do with you, either in hearkening,
or talking."

He made another struggle.

"You must listen," she said again, authoritatively, "for Mary
Barton's sake."

The spell of her name was as potent as that of the mariner's
glittering eye. "He listened like a three-year child."

"I know you care enough for her to wish to save her from harm."

He interrupted his earnest gaze into her face, with the exclamation--

"And who can yo be to know Mary Barton, or to know that she's ought
to me?"

There was a little strife in Esther's mind for an instant, between
the shame of acknowledging herself, and the additional weight to her
revelation which such acknowledgment would give. Then she spoke.

"Do you remember Esther, the sister of John Barton's wife? the aunt
to Mary? And the Valentine I sent you last February ten years?"

"Yes, I mind her well! But yo are not Esther, are you?" He looked
again into her face, and seeing that indeed it was his boyhood's
friend, he took her hand, and shook it with a cordiality that forgot
the present in the past.

"Why, Esther! Where han ye been this many a year? Where han ye been
wandering that we none of us could find you out?"

The question was asked thoughtlessly, but answered with fierce
earnestness.

"Where have I been? What have I been doing? Why do you torment me
with questions like these? Can you not guess? But the story of my
life is wanted to give force to my speech, afterwards I will tell it
you. Nay! don't change your fickle mind now, and say you don't want
to hear it. You must hear it, and I must tell it; and then see after
Mary, and take care she does not become like me. As she is loving
now, so did I love once; one above me far." She remarked not, in her
own absorption, the change in Jem's breathing, the sudden clutch at
the wall which told the fearfully vivid interest he took in what she
said. "He was so handsome, so kind! Well, the regiment was ordered to
Chester (did I tell you he was an officer?), and he could not bear to
part from me, nor I from him, so he took me with him. I never thought
poor Mary would have taken it so to heart! I always meant to send for
her to pay me a visit when I was married; for, mark you! he promised
me marriage. They all do. Then came three years of happiness. I
suppose I ought not to have been happy, but I was. I had a little
girl, too. Oh! the sweetest darling that ever was seen! But I must
not think of her," putting her hand wildly up to her forehead, "or I
shall go mad; I shall."

"Don't tell me any more about yoursel," said Jem, soothingly.

"What! you're tired already, are you? but I'll tell you; as you've
asked for it, you shall hear it. I won't recall the agony of the past
for nothing. I will have the relief of telling it. Oh, how happy I
was!"--sinking her voice into a plaintive child-like manner. "It
came like a shot on me when one day he came to me and told me he was
ordered to Ireland, and must leave me behind; at Bristol we then
were."

Jem muttered some words; she caught their meaning, and in a pleading
voice continued,

"Oh, don't abuse him; don't speak a word against him! You don't know
how I love him yet; yet, when I am sunk so low. You don't guess how
kind he was. He gave me fifty pound before we parted, and I knew he
could ill spare it. Don't, Jem, please," as his muttered indignation
rose again. For her sake he ceased. "I might have done better with
the money; I see now. But I did not know the value of money. Formerly
I had earned it easily enough at the factory, and as I had no more
sensible wants, I spent it on dress and on eating. While I lived with
him, I had it for asking; and fifty pounds would, I thought, go a
long way. So I went back to Chester, where I'd been so happy, and
set up a small-ware shop, and hired a room near. We should have done
well, but alas! alas! my little girl fell ill, and I could not mind
my shop and her too; and things grew worse and worse. I sold my
goods any how to get money to buy her food and medicine; I wrote
over and over again to her father for help, but he must have changed
his quarters, for I never got an answer. The landlord seized the
few bobbins and tapes I had left, for shop-rent; and the person to
whom the mean little room, to which we had been forced to remove,
belonged, threatened to turn us out unless his rent was paid; it had
run on many weeks, and it was winter, cold bleak winter; and my child
was so ill, so ill, and I was starving. And I could not bear to see
her suffer, and forgot how much better it would be for us to die
together;--oh her moans, her moans, which money would give me the
means of relieving! So I went out into the street, one January
night--Do you think God will punish me for that?" she asked with wild
vehemence, almost amounting to insanity, and shaking Jem's arm in
order to force an answer from him.

But before he could shape his heart's sympathy into words, her voice
had lost its wildness, and she spoke with the quiet of despair.

"But it's no matter! I've done that since, which separates us as far
asunder as heaven and hell can be." Her voice rose again to the sharp
pitch of agony. "My darling! my darling! even after death I may not
see thee, my own sweet one! She was so good--like a little angel.
What is that text, I don't remember,--that text mother used to teach
me when I sat on her knee long ago; it begins, 'Blessed are the
pure'"--

"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."

"Ay, that's it! It would break mother's heart if she knew what I am
now--it did break Mary's heart, you see. And now I recollect it was
about her child I wanted so to see you, Jem. You know Mary Barton,
don't you?" said she, trying to collect her thoughts.
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