North and South Page #18

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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matter, dear?” The thought of the little child watching for her, and
continually disappointed--from no forgetfulness on her part, but from
sheer inability to leave home--was the last drop in poor Margaret’s cup,
and she was sobbing away as if her heart would break. Mr. Hale was
distressingly perplexed. He rose, and walked nervously up and down the
room. Margaret tried to check herself, but would not speak until she
could do so with firmness. She heard him talking, as if to himself.

“I cannot bear it. I cannot bear to see the sufferings of others. I
think I could go through my own with patience. Oh, is there no going
back?”

“No, father,” said Margaret, looking straight at him, and speaking low
and steadily. “It is bad to believe you in error. It would be infinitely
worse to have known you a hypocrite.” She dropped her voice at the last
few words, as if entertaining the idea of hypocrisy for a moment in
connection with her father savoured of irreverence.

“Besides,” she went on, “it is only that I am tired to-night; don’t
think that I am suffering from what you have done, dear papa. We can’t
either of us talk about it to-night, I believe,” said she, finding that
tears and sobs would come in spite of herself. “I had better go and take
mamma up this cup of tea. She had hers very early, when I was too busy
to go to her, and I am sure she will be glad of another now.”

Railroad time inexorably wrenched them away from lovely, beloved
Helstone, the next morning. They were gone; they had seen the last of
the long low parsonage home, half-covered with China-roses and
pyracanthus--more homelike than ever in the morning sun that glittered
on its windows, each belonging to some well-loved room. Almost before
they had settled themselves into the car, sent from Southampton to fetch
them to the station, they were gone away to return no more. A sting at
Margaret’s heart made her strive to look out to catch the last glimpse
of the old church tower at the turn where she knew it might be seen
above a wave of the forest trees; but her father remembered this too,
and she silently acknowledged his greater right to the one window from
which it could be seen. She leant back and shut her eyes, and the tears
welled forth, and hung glittering for an instant on the shadowing
eyelashes before rolling slowly down her cheeks, and dropping, unheeded,
on her dress.

They were to stop in London all night at some quiet hotel. Poor Mrs.
Hale had cried in her way nearly all day long; and Dixon showed her
sorrow by extreme crossness, and a continual irritable attempt to keep
her petticoats from even touching the unconscious Mr. Hale, whom she
regarded as the origin of all this suffering.

They went through the well-known streets, past houses which they had
often visited, past shops in which she had lounged, impatient, by her
aunt’s side, while that lady was making some important and interminable
decision--nay, absolutely passed acquaintances in the streets; for
though the morning had been of an incalculable length to them, and they
felt as if it ought long ago to have closed in for the repose of
darkness, it was the very busiest time of a London afternoon in November
when they arrived there. It was long since Mrs. Hale had been in London;
and she roused up, almost like a child, to look about her at the
different streets, and to gaze after and exclaim at the shops and
carriages,--

“Oh, there’s Harrison’s, where I bought so many of my wedding things.
Dear! how altered! They’ve got immense plate-glass windows, larger than
Crawford’s in Southampton. Oh, and there, I declare--no, it is not--yes,
it is--Margaret, we have just passed Mr. Henry Lennox. Where can he be
going, among all these shops?”

Margaret started forwards, and as quickly fell back, half-smiling at
herself for the sudden motion. They were a hundred yards away by this
time; but he seemed like a relic of Helstone--he was associated with a
bright morning, an eventful day, and she should have liked to have seen
him, without his seeing her,--without the chance of their speaking.

The evening, without employment, passed in a room high up in an hotel,
was long and heavy. Mr. Hale went out to his bookseller’s, and to call
on a friend or two. Every one they saw, either in the house or out in
the streets, appeared hurrying to some appointment, expected by, or
expecting somebody. They alone seemed strange and friendless, and
desolate. Yet within a mile, Margaret knew of house after house, where
she for her own sake, and her mother for her aunt Shaw’s, would be
welcomed, if they came in gladness, or even in peace of mind. If they
came sorrowing, and wanting sympathy in a complicated trouble like the
present, then they would be felt as a shadow in all these houses of
intimate acquaintances, not friends. London life is too whirling and
full to admit of even an hour of that deep silence of feeling which the
friends of Job showed, when “they sat with him on the ground seven days
and seven nights, and none spake a word unto him; for they saw that his
grief was very great.”




CHAPTER VII.

NEW SCENES AND FACES.

        “Mist clogs the sunshine,
        Smoky dwarf houses
    Have we round on every side.”
                     MATTHEW ARNOLD.


The next afternoon, about twenty miles from Milton-Northern, they
entered on the little branch railway that led to Heston. Heston itself
was one long straggling street, running parallel to the seashore. It
had a character of its own, as different from the little bathing-places
in the south of England as they again from those of the continent. To
use a Scotch word, everything looked more “purpose-like.” The country
carts had more iron, and less wood and leather about the horse-gear; the
people in the streets, although on pleasure bent, had yet a busy mind.
The colours looked grayer--more enduring, not so gay and pretty. There
were no smock-frocks, even among the country-folk; they retarded motion,
and were apt to catch on machinery, and so the habit of wearing them had
died out. In such towns in the south of England, Margaret had seen the
shopmen, when not employed in their business, lounging a little at their
doors, enjoying the fresh air, and the look up and down the street.
Here, if they had any leisure from customers, they made themselves
business in the shop--even, Margaret fancied, to the unnecessary
unrolling and re-rolling of ribbons. All these differences struck upon
her mind, as she and her mother went out next morning to look for
lodgings.

Their two nights at hotels had cost more than Mr. Hale had anticipated,
and they were glad to take the first clean, cheerful rooms they met with
that were at liberty to receive them. There, for the first time for many
days, did Margaret feel at rest. There was a dreaminess in the rest,
too, which made it still more perfect and luxurious to repose in. The
distant sea, lapped the sandy shore with measured sound; the nearer
cries of the donkey-boys; the unusual scenes moving before her like
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