North and South Page #17

North and South is a social novel published in 1854 by English writer Elizabeth Gaskell. With Wives and Daughters and Cranford, it is one of her best-known novels and was adapted for television three times. The 2004 version renewed interest in the novel and attracted a wider readership.

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progress with their work. Down-stairs, Margaret stood calm and
collected, ready to counsel or advise the men who had been called in to
help the cook and Charlotte. These two last, crying between whiles,
wondered how the young lady could keep up so this last day, and settled
it between them that she was not likely to care much for Helstone,
having been so long in London. There she stood, very pale and quiet,
with her large grave eyes observing everything--up to every present
circumstance however small. They could not understand how her heart was
aching all the time, with a heavy pressure that no sighs could lift off
or relieve, and how constant exertion for her perceptive faculties was
the only way to keep herself from crying out with pain. Moreover, if she
gave way, who was to act? Her father was examining papers, books,
registers, what not, in the vestry with the clerk; and when he came in,
there were his own books to pack up, which no one but himself could do
to his satisfaction. Besides, was Margaret one to give way before
strange men, or even household friends like the cook and Charlotte? Not
she! But at last the four packers went into the kitchen to their tea;
and Margaret moved stiffly and slowly away from the place in the hall
where she had been standing so long, out through the bare echoing
drawing-room, into the twilight of an early November evening. There was
a filmy veil of soft dull mist obscuring, but not hiding, all objects,
giving them a lilac hue, for the sun had not yet fully set; a robin was
singing,--perhaps, Margaret thought, the very robin that her father had
so often talked of as his winter pet, and for which he had made, with
his own hands, a kind of robin-house by his study-window. The leaves
were more gorgeous than ever; the first touch of frost would lay them
all low on the ground. Already one or two kept constantly floating down,
amber and golden in the low slanting sun-rays.

Margaret went along the walk under the pear-tree wall. She had never
been along it since she paced it at Henry Lennox’s side. Here, at this
bed of thyme, he began to speak of what she must not think of now. Her
eyes were on that late-blowing rose as she was trying to answer; and she
had caught the idea of the vivid beauty of the feathery leaves of the
carrots in the very middle of his last sentence. Only a fortnight ago!
And all so changed! Where was he now? In London,--going through the old
round; dining with the old Harley Street set, or with gayer young
friends of his own. Even now, while she walked sadly through that damp
and drear garden in the dusk, with everything falling and fading, and
turning to decay around her, he might be gladly putting away his
law-books after a day of satisfactory toil, and freshening himself up,
as he had told her he often did, by a run in the Temple Gardens, taking
in the while the grand inarticulate mighty roar of tens of thousands of
busy men, nigh at hand, but not seen, and catching ever, at his quick
turns, glimpses of the lights of the city coming up out of the depths of
the river. He had often spoken to Margaret of these hasty walks,
snatched in the intervals between study and dinner. At his best times
and in his best moods had he spoken of them; and the thought of them had
struck upon her fancy. Here there was no sound. The robin had gone away
into the vast stillness of night. Now and then, a cottage door in the
distance was opened and shut, as if to admit the tired labourer to his
home; but that sounded very far away. A stealthy, creeping, cranching
sound among the crisp fallen leaves of the forest, beyond the garden,
seemed almost close at hand. Margaret knew it was some poacher. Sitting
up in her bedroom this past autumn, with the light of her candle
extinguished, and purely revelling in the solemn beauty of the heavens
and the earth, she had many a time seen the light noiseless leap of the
poachers over the garden-fence, their quick tramp across the dewy
moonlit lawn, their disappearance in the black still shadow beyond. The
wild adventurous freedom of their life had taken her fancy; she felt
inclined to wish them success; she had no fear of them. But to-night she
was afraid, she knew not why. She heard Charlotte shutting the windows,
and fastening up for the night, unconscious that any one had gone out
into the garden. A small branch--it might be of rotten wood, or it might
be broken by force--came heavily down in the nearest part of the forest;
Margaret ran, swift as Camilla, down to the window, and rapped at it
with a hurried tremulousness which startled Charlotte within.

“Let me in! Let me in! It is only me, Charlotte!” Her heart did not
still its fluttering till she was safe in the drawing-room, with the
windows fastened and bolted, and the familiar walls hemming her round,
and shutting her in. She had sate down upon a packing-case; cheerless,
chill was the dreary and dismantled room--no fire, nor other light, but
Charlotte’s long unsnuffed candle. Charlotte looked at Margaret with
surprise; and Margaret, feeling it rather than seeing it, rose up.

“I was afraid you were shutting me out altogether, Charlotte,” said she,
half-smiling. “And then you would never have heard me in the kitchen,
and the doors into the lane and churchyard are locked long ago.”

“Oh, miss, I should have been sure to have missed you soon. The men
would have wanted you to tell them how to go on. And I have put tea in
master’s study, as being the most comfortable room, so to speak.”

“Thank you, Charlotte. You are a kind girl. I shall be sorry to leave
you. You must try and write to me, if I can ever give you any little
help or good advice. I shall always be glad to get a letter from
Helstone, you know. I shall be sure and send you my address when I know
it.”

The study was all ready for tea. There was a good blazing fire, and
unlighted candles on the table. Margaret sat down on the rug, partly to
warm herself, for the dampness of the evening hung about her dress, and
over-fatigue had made her chilly. She kept herself balanced by clasping
her hands together round her knees; her head dropped a little towards
her chest; the attitude was one of despondency, whatever her frame of
mind might be. But when she heard her father’s step on the gravel
outside, she started up, and hastily shaking her heavy black hair back,
and wiping a few tears away that had come on her cheeks she knew not
how, she went out to open the door for him. He showed far more
depression than she did. She could hardly get him to talk, although she
tried to speak on subjects that would interest him, at the cost of an
effort every time which she thought would be her last.

“Have you been a very long walk to-day?” asked she, on seeing his
refusal to touch food of any kind.

“As far as Fordham Beeches. I went to see Widow Maltby; she is sadly
grieved at not having wished you good-bye. She says little Susan has
kept watch down the lane for days past.--Nay, Margaret, what is the
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