Have you ever thought about what fiction is? Probably, such a question may seem surprising: and so everything is clear. Every person throughout his life has to repeatedly create the works he needs for specific purposes - statements, autobiographies, dictations - using not gypsum or clay, not musical notes, not paints, but just a word. At the same time, almost every person will be very surprised if he is told that he thereby created a work of fiction, which is very different from visual art, music and sculpture making. However, everyone understands that a student's essay or dictation is fundamentally different from novels, short stories, news that are created by professional writers. In the works of professionals there is the most important difference - excogitation. But, oddly enough, in a school literature course, you don’t realize the full power of fiction. So using our website in your free time discover fiction for yourself. Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell (well read books .txt) 📖
- Author: Elizabeth Gaskell
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Book online «Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell (well read books .txt) 📖». Author Elizabeth Gaskell
At night, after Ruth had gone up to her room, this absence was explained to her at least. She had let down her long waving glossy hair, and was standing absorbed in thought in the middle of the room, when she heard a round clumping knock at her door, different from that given by the small knuckles of delicate fingers, and in walked Sally, with a judge-like severity of demeanour, holding in her hand two widow’s caps of commonest make and coarsest texture. Queen Eleanor herself, when she presented the bowl to Fair Rosamond, had not a more relentless purpose stamped on her demeanour than had Sally at this moment. She walked up to the beautiful, astonished Ruth, where she stood in her long, soft, white dressing-gown, with all her luxuriant brown hair hanging dishevelled down her figure, and thus Sally spoke—
“Missus—or miss, as the case may be—I’ve my doubts as to you. I’m not going to have my master and Miss Faith put upon, or shame come near them. Widows wears these sort o’ caps, and has their hair cut off; and whether widows wears wedding-rings or not, they shall have their hair cut off—they shall. I’ll have no half work in this house. I’ve lived with the family forty-nine year come Michaelmas, and I’ll not see it disgraced by any one’s fine long curls. Sit down and let me snip off your hair; and let me see you sham decently in a widow’s cap to-morrow, or I’ll leave the house. Whatten’s come over Miss Faith, as used to be as mim a lady as ever was, to be taken by such as you, I dunnot know. Here I sit down with ye, and let me crop you.”
She laid no light hand on Ruth’s shoulder; and the latter, partly intimidated by the old servant, who had hitherto only turned her vixen lining to observation, and partly because she was broken-spirited enough to be indifferent to the measure proposed, quietly sat down. Sally produced the formidable pair of scissors that always hung at her side, and began to cut in a merciless manner. She expected some remonstrance or some opposition, and had a torrent of words ready to flow forth at the least sign of rebellion; but Ruth was still and silent, with meekly-bowed head, under the strange hands that were shearing her beautiful hair into the clipped shortness of a boy’s. Long before she had finished, Sally had some slight misgivings as to the fancied necessity of her task; but it was too late, for half the curls were gone, and the rest must now come off. When she had done, she lifted up Ruth’s face by placing her hand under the round white chin. She gazed into the countenance, expecting to read some anger there, though it had not come out in words; but she only met the large, quiet eyes, that looked at her with sad gentleness out of their finely-hollowed orbits. Ruth’s soft, yet dignified submission, touched Sally with compunction, though she did not choose to show the change in her feelings. She tried to hide it indeed, by stooping to pick up the long bright tresses; and, holding them up admiringly, and letting them drop down and float on the air (like the pendent branches of the weeping birch) she said: “I thought we should ha’ had some crying—I did. They’re pretty curls enough; you’ve not been so bad to let them be cut off neither. You see, Master Thurstan is no wiser than a babby in some things; and Miss Faith just lets him have his own way; so it’s all left to me to keep him out of scrapes. I’ll wish you a very good night. I’ve heard many a one say as long hair was not wholesome. Good night.”
But in a minute she popped her head into Ruth’s room once more—
“You’ll put on them caps to-morrow morning. I’ll make you a present on them.”
Sally had carried away the beautiful curls, and she could not find it in her heart to throw such lovely chestnut tresses away, so she folded them up carefully in paper, and placed them in a safe corner of her drawer.
RUTH’S FIRST SUNDAY AT ECCLESTON
Ruth felt very shy when she came down (at half-past seven) the next morning, in her widow’s cap. Her smooth, pale face, with its oval untouched by time, looked more young and childlike than ever, when contrasted with the head-gear usually associated with ideas of age. She blushed very deeply as Mr. and Miss Benson showed the astonishment, which they could not conceal, in their looks. She said in a low voice to Miss Benson—
“Sally thought I had better wear it.”
Miss Benson made no reply; but was startled at the intelligence, which she thought was conveyed in this speech, of Sally’s acquaintance with Ruth’s real situation. She noticed Sally’s looks particularly this morning. The manner in which the old servant treated Ruth had in it far more of respect than there had been the day before; but there was a kind of satisfied way of braving out Miss Benson’s glances which made the latter uncertain and uncomfortable. She followed her brother into his study.
“Do you know, Thurstan, I am almost certain Sally suspects.”
Mr. Benson sighed. That deception grieved him, and yet he thought he saw its necessity.
“What makes you think so?” asked he.
“Oh! many little things. It was her odd way of ducking her head about, as if to catch a good view of Ruth’s left hand, that made me think of the wedding-ring; and once, yesterday, when I thought I had made up quite a natural speech, and was saying how sad it was for so young a creature to be left a widow she broke in with ‘widow be farred!’ in a very strange, contemptuous kind of manner.”
“If she suspects, we had far better tell her the truth at once. She will never rest till she finds it out, so we must make a virtue of necessity.”
“Well, brother, you shall tell her then, for I am sure I daren’t. I don’t mind doing the thing, since you talked to me that day, and since I have got to know Ruth; but I do mind all the clatter people will make about it.”
“But Sally is not ‘people.’”
“Oh, I see it must be done; she’ll talk as much as all the other persons put together, so that’s the reason I call her ‘people.’ Shall I call her?” (For the house was too homely and primitive to have bells.)
Sally came, fully aware of what was now going to be told her, and determined not to help them out in telling their awkward secret, by understanding the nature of it before it was put into the plainest language. In every pause, when they hoped she had caught the meaning they were hinting at, she persisted in looking stupid and perplexed, and in saying, “Well,” as if quite unenlightened as to the end of the story. When it was all complete and before her, she said, honestly enough—
“It’s just as I thought it was; and I think you may thank me for having had the sense to put her into widow’s caps, and clip off that bonny brown hair that was fitter for a bride in lawful matrimony than for such as her. She took it very well, though. She was as quiet as a lamb, and I clipped her pretty roughly at first. I must say, though, if I’d ha’ known who your visitor was, I’d ha’ packed up my things and cleared myself out of the house before such as her came into it. As it’s done, I suppose I must stand by you, and help you through with it; I only hope I sha’n’t lose my character—and me a parish-clerk’s daughter!”
“O Sally! people know you too well to think any ill of you,” said Miss Benson, who was pleased to find the difficulty so easily got over; for, in truth, Sally had been much softened by the unresisting gentleness with which Ruth had submitted to the “clipping” of the night before.
“If I’d been with you, Master Thurstan, I’d ha’ seen sharp after you, for you’re always picking up some one or another as nobody else would touch with a pair of tongs. Why, there was that Nelly Brandon’s child as was left at our door, if I hadn’t gone to th’ overseer we should have had that Irish tramp’s babby saddled on us for life; but I went off and told th’ overseer, and the mother was caught.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Benson sadly, “and I often lie awake and wonder what is the fate of that poor little thing, forced back on the mother who tried to get quit of it. I often doubt whether I did right; but it’s no use thinking about it now.”
“I’m thankful it isn’t,” said Sally; “and now, if we’ve talked doctrine long enough, I’ll make th’ beds. Yon girl’s secret is safe enough for me.”
Saying this she left the room, and Miss Benson followed. She found Ruth busy washing the breakfast things; and they were done in so quiet and orderly a manner, that neither Miss Benson nor Sally, both particular enough, had any of their little fancies or prejudices annoyed. She seemed to have an instinctive knowledge of the exact period when her help was likely to become a hindrance, and withdrew from the busy kitchen just at the right time.
That afternoon, as Miss Benson and Ruth sat at their work, Mrs. and Miss Bradshaw called. Miss Benson was so nervous as to surprise Ruth, who did not understand the probable and possible questions which might be asked respecting any visitor at the minister’s house. Ruth went on sewing, absorbed in her own thoughts, and glad that the conversation between the two elder ladies and the silence of the younger one, who sat at some distance from her, gave her an opportunity of retreating into the haunts of memory; and soon the work fell from her hands, and her eyes were fixed on the little garden beyond, but she did not see its flowers or its walls; she saw the mountains which girdled Llan-dhu, and saw the sun rise from behind their iron outline, just as it had done—how long ago? was it months or was it years?—since she had watched the night through, crouched up at his door. Which was the dream and which the reality? that distant life or this? His moans rang more clearly in her ears than the buzzing of the conversation between Mrs. Bradshaw and Miss Benson.
At length the subdued, scared-looking little lady and her bright-eyed silent daughter rose to take leave; Ruth started into the present, and stood up and curtseyed, and turned sick at heart with sudden recollection.
Miss Benson accompanied Mrs. Bradshaw to the door; and in the passage gave her a long explanation of Ruth’s (fictitious) history. Mrs. Bradshaw looked so much interested and pleased, that Miss Benson enlarged a little more than was necessary, and rounded off her invention with one or two imaginary details, which, she was quite unconscious, were overheard by her brother through the half-open study door.
She was rather dismayed when he called her into his room after
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