The Grey Woman and other Tales

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Gaskell Elizabeth Cleghorn. The Grey Woman and other Tales

THE GREY WOMAN

PORTION I

PORTION II

PORTION III

CURIOUS IF TRUE

SIX WEEKS AT HEPPENHEIM

LIBBIE MARSH'S THREE ERAS

ERA I. VALENTINE'S DAY

ERA II. WHITSUNTIDE

ERA III. MICHAELMAS

CHRISTMAS STORMS AND SUNSHINE

HAND AND HEART

BESSY'S TROUBLES AT HOME

DISAPPEARANCES

Отрывок из книги

There is a mill by the Neckar-side, to which many people resort for coffee, according to the fashion which is almost national in Germany. There is nothing particularly attractive in the situation of this mill; it is on the Mannheim (the flat and unromantic) side of Heidelberg. The river turns the mill-wheel with a plenteous gushing sound; the out-buildings and the dwelling-house of the miller form a well-kept dusty quadrangle. Again, further from the river, there is a garden full of willows, and arbours, and flower-beds not well kept, but very profuse in flowers and luxuriant creepers, knotting and looping the arbours together. In each of these arbours is a stationary table of white painted wood, and light moveable chairs of the same colour and material.

"His family have held this mill ever since the old Palatinate days; or rather, I should say, have possessed the ground ever since then, for two successive mills of theirs have been burnt down by the French. If you want to see Scherer in a passion, just talk to him of the possibility of a French invasion."

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And at length Fritz gave way, and believed me to be his sister Anna, even as though I were risen from the dead. And thou rememberest how he fetched in his wife, and told her that I was not dead, but was come back to the old home once more, changed as I was. And she would scarce believe him, and scanned me with a cold, distrustful eye, till at length – for I knew her of old as Babette Müller – I said that I was well-to-do, and needed not to seek out friends for what they had to give. And then she asked – not me, but her husband – why I had kept silent so long, leading all – father, brother, every one that loved me in my own dear home – to esteem me dead. And then thine uncle (thou rememberest?) said he cared not to know more than I cared to tell; that I was his Anna, found again, to be a blessing to him in his old age, as I had been in his boyhood. I thanked him in my heart for his trust; for were the need for telling all less than it seems to me now I could not speak of my past life. But she, who was my sister-in-law still, held back her welcome, and, for want of that, I did not go to live in Heidelberg as I had planned beforehand, in order to be near my brother Fritz, but contented myself with his promise to be a father to my Ursula when I should die and leave this weary world.

That Babette Müller was, as I may say, the cause of all my life's suffering. She was a baker's daughter in Heidelberg – a great beauty, as people said, and, indeed, as I could see for myself. I, too – thou sawest my picture – was reckoned a beauty, and I believe I was so. Babette Müller looked upon me as a rival. She liked to be admired, and had no one much to love her. I had several people to love me – thy grandfather, Fritz, the old servant Kätchen, Karl, the head apprentice at the mill – and I feared admiration and notice, and the being stared at as the "Schöne Müllerin," whenever I went to make my purchases in Heidelberg.

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