North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell [best love story novels in english TXT] 📗
- Author: Elizabeth Gaskell
- Performer: 0140434240
Book online «North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell [best love story novels in english TXT] 📗». Author Elizabeth Gaskell
And there was no tone of regret, or emotion of any kind in the voice with which he said goodbye; and the offered hand was taken with a resolute calmness, and dropped as carelessly as if it had been a dead and withered flower. But none in his household saw Mr. Thornton again that day. He was busily engaged; or so he said.
Margaret’s strength was so utterly exhausted by these visits, that she had to submit to much watching, and petting, and sighing ‘I-told-you-so’s,’ from her aunt. Dixon said she was quite as bad as she had been on the first day she heard of her father’s death; and she and Mrs. Shaw consulted as to the desirableness of delaying the morrow’s journey. But when her aunt reluctantly proposed a few days’ delay to Margaret, the latter writhed her body as if in acute suffering, and said:
‘Oh! let us go. I cannot be patient here. I shall not get well here. I want to forget.’
So the arrangements went on; and Captain Lennox came, and with him news of Edith and the little boy; and Margaret found that the indifferent, careless conversation of one who, however kind, was not too warm and anxious a sympathiser, did her good. She roused up; and by the time that she knew she might expect Higgins, she was able to leave the room quietly, and await in her own chamber the expected summons.
‘Eh!’ said he, as she came in, ‘to think of th’ oud gentleman dropping off as he did! Yo’ might ha’ knocked me down wi’ a straw when they telled me. “Mr. Hale?” said I; “him as was th’ parson?” “Ay,” said they. “Then,” said I, “there’s as good a man gone as ever lived on this earth, let who will be t’ other!” And I came to see yo’, and tell yo’ how grieved I were, but them women in th’ kitchen wouldn’t tell yo’ I were there. They said yo’ were ill,—and butter me, but yo’ dunnot look like th’ same wench. And yo’re going to be a grand lady up i’ Lunnon, aren’t yo’?’
‘Not a grand lady,’ said Margaret, half smiling.
‘Well! Thornton said—says he, a day or two ago, “Higgins, have yo’ seen Miss Hale?” “No,” says I; “there’s a pack o’ women who won’t let me at her. But I can bide my time, if she’s ill. She and I knows each other pretty well; and hoo’l not go doubting that I’m main sorry for th’ oud gentleman’s death, just because I can’t get at her and tell her so.” And says he, “Yo’ll not have much time for to try and see her, my fine chap. She’s not for staying with us a day longer nor she can help. She’s got grand relations, and they’re carrying her off; and we sha’n’t see her no more.” “Measter,” said I, “if I dunnot see her afore hoo goes, I’ll strive to get up to Lunnun next Whissuntide, that I will. I’ll not be baulked of saying her goodbye by any relations whatsomdever.” But, bless yo’, I knowed yo’d come. It were only for to humour the measter, I let on as if I thought yo’d mappen leave Milton without seeing me.’
‘You’re quite right,’ said Margaret. ‘You only do me justice. And you’ll not forget me, I’m sure. If no one else in Milton remembers me, I’m certain you will; and papa too. You know how good and how tender he was. Look, Higgins! here is his bible. I have kept it for you. I can ill spare it; but I know he would have liked you to have it. I’m sure you’ll care for it, and study what is In it, for his sake.’
‘Yo’ may say that. If it were the deuce’s own scribble, and yo’ axed me to read in it for yo’r sake, and th’ oud gentleman’s, I’d do it. Whatten’s this, wench? I’m not going for to take yo’r brass, so dunnot think it. We’ve been great friends, ‘bout the sound o’ money passing between us.’
‘For the children—for Boucher’s children,’ said Margaret, hurriedly. ‘They may need it. You’ve no right to refuse it for them. I would not give you a penny,’ she said, smiling; ‘don’t think there’s any of it for you.’
‘Well, wench! I can nobbut say, Bless yo’! and bless yo’!—and amen.’
EASE NOT PEACE
‘A dull rotation, never at a stay, Yesterday’s face twin image of to-day.’ COWPER.
‘Of what each one should be, he sees the form and rule, And till he reach to that, his joy can ne’er be full.’ RUCKERT.
It was very well for Margaret that the extreme quiet of the Harley Street house, during Edith’s recovery from her confinement, gave her the natural rest which she needed. It gave her time to comprehend the sudden change which had taken place in her circumstances within the last two months. She found herself at once an inmate of a luxurious house, where the bare knowledge of the existence of every trouble or care seemed scarcely to have penetrated. The wheels of the machinery of daily life were well oiled, and went along with delicious smoothness. Mrs. Shaw and Edith could hardly make enough of Margaret, on her return to what they persisted in calling her home. And she felt that it was almost ungrateful in her to have a secret feeling that the Helstone vicarage—nay, even the poor little house at Milton, with her anxious father and her invalid mother, and all the small household cares of comparative poverty, composed her idea of home. Edith was impatient to get well, in order to fill Margaret’s bedroom with all the soft comforts, and pretty nick-knacks, with which her own abounded. Mrs. Shaw and her maid found plenty of occupation in restoring Margaret’s wardrobe to a state of elegant variety. Captain Lennox was easy, kind, and gentlemanly; sate with his wife in her dressing-room an hour or two every day; played with his little boy for another hour, and lounged away the rest of his time at his club, when he was not engaged out to dinner. Just before Margaret had recovered from her necessity for quiet and repose—before she had begun to feel her life wanting and dull—Edith came downstairs and resumed her usual part in the household; and Margaret fell into the old habit of watching, and admiring, and ministering to her cousin. She gladly took all charge of the semblances of duties off Edith’s hands; answered notes, reminded her of engagements, tended her when no gaiety was in prospect, and she was consequently rather inclined to fancy herself ill. But all the rest of the family were in the full business of the London season, and Margaret was often left alone. Then her thoughts went back to Milton, with a strange sense of the contrast between the life there, and here. She was getting surfeited of the eventless ease in which no struggle or endeavour was required. She was afraid lest she should even become sleepily deadened into forgetfulness of anything beyond the life which was lapping her round with luxury. There might be toilers and moilers there in London, but she never saw them; the very servants lived in an underground world of their own, of which she knew neither the hopes nor the fears; they only seemed to start into existence when some want or whim of their master and mistress needed them. There was a strange unsatisfied vacuum in Margaret’s heart and mode of life; and, once when she had dimly hinted this to Edith, the latter, wearied with dancing the night before, languidly stroked Margaret’s cheek as she sat by her in the old attitude,—she on a footstool by the sofa where Edith lay.
‘Poor child!’ said Edith. ‘It is a little sad for you to be left, night after night, just at this time when all the world is so gay. But we shall be having our dinner-parties soon—as soon as Henry comes back from circuit—and then there will be a little pleasant variety for you. No wonder it is moped, poor darling!’
Margaret did not feel as if the dinner-parties would be a panacea. But Edith piqued herself on her dinner-parties; ‘so different,’ as she said, ‘from the old dowager dinners under mamma’s regime;’ and Mrs. Shaw herself seemed to take exactly the same kind of pleasure in the very different arrangements and circle of acquaintances which were to Captain and Mrs. Lennox’s taste, as she did in the more formal and ponderous entertainments which she herself used to give. Captain Lennox was always extremely kind and brotherly to Margaret. She was really very fond of him, excepting when he was anxiously attentive to Edith’s dress and appearance, with a view to her beauty making a sufficient impression on the world. Then all the latent Vashti in Margaret was roused, and she could hardly keep herself from expressing her feelings.
The course of Margaret’s day was this; a quiet hour or two before a late breakfast; an unpunctual meal, lazily eaten by weary and half-awake people, but yet at which, in all its dragged-out length, she was expected to be present, because, directly afterwards, came a discussion of plans, at which, although they none of them concerned her, she was expected to give her sympathy, if she could not assist with her advice; an endless number of notes to write, which Edith invariably left to her, with many caressing compliments as to her eloquence du billet; a little play with Sholto as he returned from his morning’s walk; besides the care of the children during the servants’ dinner; a drive or callers; and some dinner or morning engagement for her aunt and cousins, which left Margaret free, it is true, but rather wearied with the inactivity of the day, coming upon depressed spirits and delicate health.
She looked forward with longing, though unspoken interest to the homely object of Dixon’s return from Milton; where, until now, the old servant had been busily engaged in winding up all the affairs of the Hale family. It had appeared a sudden famine to her heart, this entire cessation of any news respecting the people amongst whom she had lived so long. It was true, that Dixon, in her business-letters, quoted, every now and then, an opinion of Mr. Thornton’s as to what she had better do about the furniture, or how act in regard to the landlord of the Crampton Terrace house. But it was only here and there that the name came in, or any Milton name, indeed; and Margaret was sitting one evening, all alone in the Lennoxes’s drawing-room, not reading Dixon’s letters, which yet she held in her hand, but thinking over them, and recalling the days which had been, and picturing the busy life out of which her own had been taken and never missed; wondering if all went on in that whirl just as if she and her father had never been; questioning within herself, if no one in all the crowd missed her, (not Higgins, she was not thinking of him,) when, suddenly, Mr. Bell was announced; and Margaret hurried the letters into her work-basket, and started up, blushing as if she had been doing some guilty thing.
‘Oh, Mr. Bell! I never thought of seeing you!’
‘But you
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