Mary Barton Page #45

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

								

morning--nay, to-night, and I'll marry you in defiance of all the
world, rather than give you up. In a year or two my father will
forgive me, and meanwhile you shall have every luxury money can
purchase, and every charm that love can devise to make your life
happy. After all, my mother was but a factory girl." (This was said
half to himself, as if to reconcile himself to this bold step.) "Now,
Mary, you see how willing I am to--to sacrifice a good deal for you;
I even offer you marriage, to satisfy your little ambitious heart;
so, now, won't you say you can love me a little, little bit?"

He pulled her towards him. To his surprise, she still resisted. Yes!
though all she had pictured to herself for so many months in being
the wife of Mr. Carson was now within her grasp, she resisted. His
speech had given her but one feeling, that of exceeding great relief.
For she had dreaded, now she knew what true love was, to think of
the attachment she might have created; the deep feeling her flirting
conduct might have called out. She had loaded herself with reproaches
for the misery she might have caused. It was a relief to gather that
the attachment was of that low, despicable kind, which can plan to
seduce the object of its affection; that the feeling she had caused
was shallow enough, for it only pretended to embrace self, at the
expense of the misery, the ruin, of one falsely termed beloved. She
need not be penitent to such a plotter! That was the relief.

"I am obliged to you, sir, for telling me what you have. You may
think I am a fool; but I did think you meant to marry me all along;
and yet, thinking so, I felt I could not love you. Still I felt sorry
I had gone so far in keeping company with you. Now, sir, I tell you,
if I had loved you before, I don't think I should have loved you now
you have told me you meant to ruin me; for that's the plain English
of not meaning to marry me till just this minute. I said I was sorry,
and humbly begged your pardon; that was before I knew what you were.
Now I scorn you, sir, for plotting to ruin a poor girl. Good night."

And with a wrench, for which she had reserved all her strength, she
was off like a bolt. They heard her flying footsteps echo down the
quiet street. The next sound was Sally's laugh, which grated on Mr.
Carson's ears, and keenly irritated him.

"And what do you find so amusing, Sally?" asked he.

"Oh, sir, I beg your pardon. I humbly beg your pardon, as Mary says,
but I can't help laughing, to think how she's outwitted us." (She was
going to have said, "outwitted you," but changed the pronoun.)

"Why, Sally, had you any idea she was going to fly out in this
style?"

"No, I hadn't, to be sure. But if you did think of marrying her, why
(if I may be so bold as to ask) did you go and tell her you had no
thought of doing otherwise by her? That was what put her up at last!"

"Why I had repeatedly before led her to infer that marriage was not
my object. I never dreamed she could have been so foolish as to have
mistaken me, little provoking romancer though she be! So I naturally
wished her to know what a sacrifice of prejudice, of--of myself, in
short, I was willing to make for her sake; yet I don't think she was
aware of it after all. I believe I might have any lady in Manchester
if I liked, and yet I was willing and ready to marry a poor
dress-maker. Don't you understand me now? and don't you see what a
sacrifice I was making to humour her? and all to no avail."

Sally was silent, so he went on:

"My father would have forgiven any temporary connexion, far sooner
than my marrying one so far beneath me in rank."

"I thought you said, sir, your mother was a factory girl," reminded
Sally, rather maliciously.

"Yes, yes!--but then my father was in much such a station; at any
rate, there was not the disparity there is between Mary and me."

Another pause.

"Then you mean to give her up, sir? She made no bones of saying she
gave you up."

"No, I do not mean to give her up, whatever you and she may please to
think. I am more in love with her than ever; even for this charming
capricious ebullition of hers. She'll come round, you may depend upon
it. Women always do. They always have second thoughts, and find out
that they are best in casting off a lover. Mind! I don't say I shall
offer her the same terms again."

With a few more words of no importance, the allies parted.




CHAPTER XII.

OLD ALICE'S BAIRN.


   "I lov'd him not; and yet, now he is gone,
       I feel I am alone.
   I check'd him while he spoke; yet, could he speak,
       Alas! I would not check.
   For reasons not to love him once I sought,
       And wearied all my thought."

   W. S. LANDOR.


And now Mary had, as she thought, dismissed both her lovers. But they
looked on their dismissals with very different eyes. He who loved her
with all his heart and with all his soul, considered his rejection
final. He did not comfort himself with the idea, which would have
proved so well founded in his case, that women have second thoughts
about casting off their lovers. He had too much respect for his
own heartiness of love to believe himself unworthy of Mary; that
mock humble conceit did not enter his head. He thought he did not
"hit Mary's fancy;" and though that may sound a trivial every-day
expression, yet the reality of it cut him to the heart. Wild visions
of enlistment, of drinking himself into forgetfulness, of becoming
desperate in some way or another, entered his mind; but then the
thought of his mother stood like an angel with a drawn sword in the
way to sin. For, you know, "he was the only son of his mother, and
she was a widow;" dependent on him for daily bread. So he could not
squander away health and time, which were to him money wherewith to
support her failing years. He went to his work, accordingly, to all
outward semblance just as usual; but with a heavy, heavy heart
within.

Mr. Carson, as we have seen, persevered in considering Mary's
rejection of him as merely a "charming caprice." If she were at work,
Sally Leadbitter was sure to slip a passionately loving note into her
hand, and then so skilfully move away from her side, that Mary could
not all at once return it, without making some sensation among the
work-women. She was even forced to take several home with her. But
after reading one, she determined on her plan. She made no great
resistance to receiving them from Sally, but kept them unopened, and
occasionally returned them in a blank half-sheet of paper. But far
worse than this, was the being so constantly waylaid as she went home
by her persevering lover; who had been so long acquainted with all
her habits, that she found it difficult to evade him. Late or early,
she was never certain of being free from him. Go this way or that,
he might come up some cross street when she had just congratulated
herself on evading him for that day. He could not have taken a surer
mode of making himself odious to her.
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