Read Online A Dark Night's Work by Elizabeth Gaskell - Free Book Online Page B

papa; I was only afraid you were angry."
    "Well, if I was a bit perplexed, seeing you look so ill and pining was
not the way to bring me round. Old Corbet, I must say, is trying to make
a good bargain for his son. It is well for me that I have never been an
extravagant man."
    "But, papa, we don't want all this much."
    "Yes, yes! it is all right. You shall go into their family as a well-
portioned girl, if you can't go as a Lady Maria. Come, don't trouble
your little head any more about it. Give me one more kiss, and then
we'll go and order the horses, and have a ride together, by way of
keeping holiday. I deserve a holiday, don't I, Nelly?"
    Some country people at work at the roadside, as the father and daughter
passed along, stopped to admire their bright happy looks, and one spoke
of the hereditary handsomeness of the Wilkins family (for the old man,
the present Mr. Wilkins's father, had been fine-looking in his drab
breeches and gaiters, and usual assumption of a yeoman's dress). Another
said it was easy for the rich to be handsome; they had always plenty to
eat, and could ride when they were tired of walking, and had no care for
the morrow to keep them from sleeping at nights. And, in sad
acquiescence with their contrasted lot, the men went on with their
hedging and ditching in silence.
    And yet, if they had known—if the poor did know—the troubles and
temptations of the rich; if those men had foreseen the lot darkening over
the father, and including the daughter in its cloud; if Mr. Wilkins
himself had even imagined such a future possible . . . Well, there was
truth in the old heathen saying, "Let no man be envied till his death."
    Ellinor had no more rides with her father; no, not ever again; though
they had stopped that afternoon at the summit of a breezy common, and
looked at a ruined hall, not so very far off; and discussed whether they
could reach it that day, and decided that it was too far away for
anything but a hurried inspection, and that some day soon they would make
the old place into the principal object of an excursion. But a rainy
time came on, when no rides were possible; and whether it was the
influence of the weather, or some other care or trouble that oppressed
him, Mr. Wilkins seemed to lose all wish for much active exercise, and
rather sought a stimulus to his spirits and circulation in wine. But of
this Ellinor was innocently unaware. He seemed dull and weary, and sat
long, drowsing and drinking after dinner. If the servants had not been
so fond of him for much previous generosity and kindness, they would have
complained now, and with reason, of his irritability, for all sorts of
things seemed to annoy him.
    "You should get the master to take a ride with you, miss," said Dixon,
one day as he was putting Ellinor on her horse. "He's not looking well,
he's studying too much at the office."
    But when Ellinor named it to her father, he rather hastily replied that
it was all very well for women to ride out whenever they liked—men had
something else to do; and then, as he saw her look grave and puzzled, he
softened down his abrupt saying by adding that Dunster had been making a
fuss about his partner's non-attendance, and altogether taking a good
deal upon himself in a very offensive way, so that he thought it better
to go pretty regularly to the office, in order to show him who was
master—senior partner, and head of the business, at any rate.
    Ellinor sighed a little over her disappointment at her father's
preoccupation, and then forgot her own little regret in anger at Mr.
Dunster, who had seemed all along to be a thorn in her father's side, and
had latterly gained some power and authority over him, the exercise of
which, Ellinor could not help thinking, was a very impertinent line of
conduct from a junior partner, so lately only a paid clerk, to his
superior. There was a sense of something wrong in the Ford Bank
household for many weeks about this time. Mr. Wilkins was not like
himself, and his