Mary Barton Page #43

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

								

pretty clearly she did not desire her for a daughter-in-law: while
Mr. Carson was rich, and prosperous, and gay, and (she believed)
would place her in all circumstances of ease and luxury, where want
could never come. What were these hollow vanities to her, now she
had discovered the passionate secret of her soul? She felt as if she
almost hated Mr. Carson, who had decoyed her with his baubles. She
now saw how vain, how nothing to her, would be all gaieties and
pomps, all joys and pleasures, unless she might share them with Jem;
yes, with him she harshly rejected so short a time ago. If he were
poor, she loved him all the better. If his mother did think her
unworthy of him, what was it but the truth, as she now owned with
bitter penitence. She had hitherto been walking in grope-light
towards a precipice; but in the clear revelation of that past hour,
she saw her danger, and turned away resolutely and for ever.

That was some comfort: I mean her clear perception of what she ought
not to do; of what no luring temptation should ever again induce her
to hearken to. How she could best undo the wrong she had done to Jem
and herself by refusing his love, was another anxious question. She
wearied herself with proposing plans, and rejecting them.

She was roused to a consciousness of time by hearing the neighbouring
church clock strike twelve. Her father she knew might be expected
home any minute, and she was in no mood for a meeting with him.
So she hastily gathered up her work, and went to her own little
bed-room, leaving him to let himself in.

She put out her candle, that her father might not see its light under
the door; and sat down on her bed to think. But after turning things
over in her mind again and again, she could only determine at once
to put an end to all further communication with Mr. Carson, in the
most decided way she could. Maidenly modesty (and true love is ever
modest) seemed to oppose every plan she could think of, for showing
Jem how much she repented her decision against him, and how dearly
she had now discovered that she loved him. She came to the unusual
wisdom of resolving to do nothing, but try and be patient, and
improve circumstances as they might turn up. Surely, if Jem knew of
her remaining unmarried, he would try his fortune again. He would
never be content with one rejection; she believed she could not
in his place. She had been very wrong, but now she would try and
do right, and have womanly patience, until he saw her changed and
repentant mind in her natural actions. Even if she had to wait for
years, it was no more than now it was easy to look forward to, as a
penance for her giddy flirting on the one hand, and her cruel mistake
concerning her feelings on the other. So anticipating a happy ending
to the course of her love, however distant it might be, she fell
asleep just as the earliest factory bells were ringing. She had sunk
down in her clothes, and her sleep was unrefreshing. She wakened up
shivery and chill in body, and sorrow-stricken in mind, though she
could not at first rightly tell the cause of her depression.

She recalled the events of the night before, and still resolved to
adhere to those determinations she had then formed. But patience
seemed a far more difficult virtue this morning.

She hastened down-stairs, and in her earnest sad desire to do right,
now took much pains to secure a comfortable though scanty breakfast
for her father; and when he dawdled into the room, in an evidently
irritable temper, she bore all with the gentleness of penitence, till
at last her mild answers turned away wrath.

She loathed the idea of meeting Sally Leadbitter at her daily
work; yet it must be done, and she tried to nerve herself for the
encounter, and to make it at once understood, that having determined
to give up having any thing further to do with Mr. Carson, she
considered the bond of intimacy broken between them.

But Sally was not the person to let these resolutions be carried
into effect too easily. She soon became aware of the present state
of Mary's feelings, but she thought they merely arose from the
changeableness of girlhood, and that the time would come when Mary
would thank her for almost forcing her to keep up her meetings and
communications with her rich lover.

So, when two days had passed over in rather too marked avoidance
of Sally on Mary's part, and when the former was made aware by Mr.
Carson's complaints that Mary was not keeping her appointments with
him, and that unless he detained her by force, he had no chance of
obtaining a word as she passed him in the street on her rapid walk
home, she resolved to compel Mary to what she called her own good.

She took no notice during the third day of Mary's avoidance as they
sat at work; she rather seemed to acquiesce in the coolness of their
intercourse. She put away her sewing early, and went home to her
mother, who, she said, was more ailing than usual. The other girls
soon followed her example, and Mary, casting a rapid glance up and
down the street, as she stood last on Miss Simmonds' door-step,
darted homewards, in hopes of avoiding the person whom she was fast
learning to dread. That night she was safe from any encounter on
her road, and she arrived at home, which she found as she expected,
empty; for she knew it was a club night, which her father would not
miss. She sat down to recover breath, and to still her heart, which
panted more from nervousness than from over-exertion, although she
had walked so quickly. Then she rose, and taking off her bonnet, her
eye caught the form of Sally Leadbitter passing the window with a
lingering step, and looking into the darkness with all her might, as
if to ascertain if Mary were returned. In an instant she re-passed
and knocked at the house-door, but without awaiting an answer, she
entered.

"Well, Mary, dear" (knowing well how little "dear" Mary considered
her just then); "i's so difficult to get any comfortable talk at Miss
Simmonds', I thought I'd just step up and see you at home."

"I understood from what you said your mother was ailing, and that you
wanted to be with her," replied Mary, in no welcoming tone.

"Ay, but mother's better now," said the unabashed Sally. "Your
father's out I suppose?" looking round as well as she could; for Mary
made no haste to perform the hospitable offices of striking a match,
and lighting a candle.

"Yes, he's out," said Mary, shortly, and busying herself at last
about the candle, without ever asking her visitor to sit down.

"So much the better," answered Sally, "for to tell you the truth,
Mary, I've a friend at th' end of the street, as is anxious to come
and see you at home, since you're grown so particular as not to like
to speak to him in the street. He'll be here directly."

"Oh, Sally, don't let him," said Mary, speaking at last heartily; and
running to the door she would have fastened it, but Sally held her
hands, laughing meanwhile at her distress.
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