North and South Page #20

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.

• Novel

								

much the habits of society for that. Here was a person come on business
to her father; and, as he was one who had shown himself obliging, she
was disposed to treat him with a full measure of civility. Mr. Thornton
was a good deal more surprised and discomfited than she. Instead of a
quiet, middle-aged clergyman, a young lady came forward with frank
dignity,--a young lady of a different type to most of those he was in
the habit of seeing. Her dress was very plain: a close straw bonnet of
the best material and shape, trimmed with white ribbon; a large Indian
shawl, which hung about her in long heavy folds, and which she wore as
an empress wears her drapery. He did not understand who she was, as he
caught the simple, straight, unabashed look, which showed that his
being there was of no concern to the beautiful countenance, and called
up no flush of surprise to the pale ivory of the complexion. He had
heard that Mr. Hale had a daughter, but he had imagined that she was a
little girl.

“Mr. Thornton, I believe!” said Margaret, after a half-instant’s pause,
during which his unready words would not come. “Will you sit down. My
father brought me to the door not a minute ago, but unfortunately he was
not told that you were here, and he has gone away on some business. But
he will come back almost directly. I am sorry you have had the trouble
of calling twice.”

Mr. Thornton was in habits of authority himself, but she seemed to
assume some kind of rule over him at once. He had been getting impatient
at the loss of his time on a market-day, the moment before she appeared,
yet now he calmly took a seat at her bidding.

“Do you know where it is that Mr. Hale has gone to? Perhaps I might be
able to find him.”

“He has gone to a Mr. Donkin in Canute Street. He is the landlord of the
house my father wishes to take in Crampton.”

Mr. Thornton knew the house. He had seen the advertisement, and been to
look at it, in compliance with a request of Mr. Bell’s that he would
assist Mr. Hale to the best of his power: and also instigated by his own
interest in the case of a clergyman who had given up his living under
circumstances such as those of Mr. Hale. Mr. Thornton had thought that
the house in Crampton was really just the thing; but now that he saw
Margaret, with her superb ways of moving and looking, he began to feel
ashamed of having imagined that it would do very well for the Hales, in
spite of a certain vulgarity in it which had struck him at the time of
his looking it over.

Margaret could not help her looks; but the short curled upper lip, the
round, massive up-turned chin, the manner of carrying her head, her
movements, full of a soft feminine defiance, always gave strangers the
impression of haughtiness. She was tired now, and would much rather have
remained silent, and taken the rest her father had planned for her; but,
of course, she owed to herself to be a gentlewoman, and to speak
courteously from time to time to this stranger; not over-brushed, nor
over-polished, it must be confessed, after his rough encounter with
Milton streets and crowds. She wished that he would go, as he had once
spoken of doing, instead of sitting there, answering with curt sentences
all the remarks she made. She had taken off her shawl, and hung it over
the back of her chair. She sat facing him and facing the light; her full
beauty met his eye; her round white flexile throat rising out of the
full, yet lithe figure; her lips moving so slightly as she spoke, not
breaking the cold serene look of her face with any variation from the
one lovely haughty curve; her eyes, with their soft gloom, meeting his
with quiet maiden freedom. He almost said to himself that he did not
like her, before their conversation ended; he tried so to compensate
himself for the mortified feeling, that while he looked upon her with
an admiration he could not repress, she looked at him with proud
indifference, taking him, he thought, for what, in his irritation, he
told himself he was--a great rough fellow, with not a grace or a
refinement about him. Her quiet coldness of demeanour he interpreted
into contemptuousness, and resented it in his heart to the pitch of
almost inclining him to get up and go away, and have nothing more to do
with these Hales, and their superciliousness.

Just as Margaret had exhausted her last subject of conversation--and yet
conversation that could hardly be called which consisted of so few and
such short speeches--her father came in, and with his pleasant
gentlemanly courteousness of apology, reinstated his name and family in
Mr. Thornton’s good opinion.

Mr. Hale and his visitor had a good deal to say respecting their mutual
friend, Mr. Bell; and Margaret, glad that her part of entertaining the
visitor was over, went to the window to try and make herself more
familiar with the strange aspect of the street. She got so much absorbed
in watching what was going on outside that she hardly heard her father
when he spoke to her, and he had to repeat what he said:

“Margaret! the landlord will persist in admiring that hideous paper, and
I am afraid we must let it remain.”

“Oh dear! I am sorry!” she replied, and began to turn over in her mind
the possibility of hiding part of it, at least, by some of her sketches,
but gave up the idea at last, as likely only to make bad worse. Her
father, meanwhile, with his kindly country hospitality, was pressing Mr.
Thornton to stay to luncheon with them. It would have been very
inconvenient to him to do so, yet he felt that he should have yielded,
if Margaret by word or look had seconded her father’s invitation; he was
glad she did not, and yet he was irritated at her for not doing so. She
gave him a low, grave bow when he left, and he felt more awkward and
self-conscious in every limb than he had ever done in his life before.

“Well, Margaret, now to luncheon as fast as we can. Have you ordered
it?”

“No, papa; that man was here when I came home, and I have never had an
opportunity.”

“Then we must take anything we can get. He must have been waiting a long
time I’m afraid.”

“It seemed exceedingly long to me. I was just at the last gasp when you
came in. He never went on with any subject, but gave little, short,
abrupt answers.”

“Very much to the point though, I should think. He is a clear-headed
fellow. He said (did you hear?) that Crampton is on gravelly soil, and
by far the most healthy suburb in the neighbourhood of Milton.”

When they returned to Heston, there was the day’s account to be given to
Mrs. Hale, who was full of questions, which they answered in the
intervals of tea-drinking.

“And what is your correspondent, Mr. Thornton, like?”

“Ask Margaret,” said her husband. “She and he had a long attempt at
conversation, while I was away speaking to the landlord.”

“Oh! I hardly know what he is like,” said Margaret, lazily; too tired to
tax her powers of description much. And then rousing herself, she said,
“He is a tall, broad-shouldered man, about--how old, papa?”
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