North and South Page #31

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

								

centre of each other’s souls, which the uneasy tenderness of Mrs.
Thornton’s manner to her daughter, the shame with which she thought to
hide the poverty of her child in all the grand qualities which she
herself possessed unconsciously, and which she set so high a value upon
in others--this shame, I say, betrayed the want of a secure
resting-place for her affection. She never called her son by any name
but John; “love,” and “dear,” and such like terms, were reserved for
Fanny. But her heart gave thanks for him day and night; and she walked
proudly among women for his sake.

“Fanny dear! I shall have horses to the carriage to-day, to go and call
on these Hales. Should not you go and see nurse? It’s in the same
direction, and she’s always so glad to see you. You could go on there
while I am at Mrs. Hale’s.”

“Oh! mamma, it’s such a long way, and I am so tired.”

“With what?” asked Mrs. Thornton, her brow slightly contracting.

“I don’t know--the weather, I think. It is so relaxing. Couldn’t you
bring nurse here, mamma? The carriage could fetch her, and she could
spend the rest of the day here, which I know she would like.”

Mrs. Thornton did not speak; but she laid her work on the table, and
seemed to think.

“It will be a long way for her to walk back at night!” she remarked, at
last.

“Oh, but I will send her home in a cab. I never thought of her walking.”

At this point, Mr. Thornton came in, just before going to the mill.

“Mother! I need hardly say, that if there is any little thing that could
serve Mrs. Hale as an invalid, you will offer it, I’m sure.”

“If I can find it out, I will. But I have never been ill myself, so I am
not much up to invalids’ fancies.”

“Well! here is Fanny then, who is seldom without an ailment. She will be
able to suggest something, perhaps--won’t you, Fan?”

“I have not always an ailment,” said Fanny, pettishly; “and I am not
going with mamma. I have a headache to-day, and I shan’t go out.”

Mr. Thornton looked annoyed. His mother’s eyes were bent on her work, at
which she was now stitching away busily.

“Fanny! I wish you to go,” said he, authoritatively. “It will do you
good, instead of harm. You will oblige me by going, without my saying
anything more about it.”

He went abruptly out of the room after saying this.

If he had stayed a minute longer, Fanny would have cried at his tone of
command, even when he used the words, “You will oblige me.” As it was,
she grumbled.

“John always speaks as if I fancied I was ill, and I am sure I never do
fancy any such thing. Who are these Hales that he makes such a fuss
about?”

“Fanny, don’t speak so of your brother. He has good reasons of some kind
or other, or he would not wish us to go. Make haste and put your things
on.”

But the little altercation between her son and her daughter did not
incline Mrs. Thornton more favourably towards “these Hales.” Her jealous
heart repeated her daughter’s question, “Who are they, that he is so
anxious we should pay them all this attention?” It came up like a burden
to a song, long after Fanny had forgotten all about it in the pleasant
excitement of seeing the effect of a new bonnet in the looking-glass.

Mrs. Thornton was shy. It was only of late years that she had had
leisure enough in her life to go into society; and as society she did
not enjoy it. As dinner-giving, and as criticising other people’s
dinners, she took satisfaction in it. But this going to make
acquaintance with strangers was a very different thing. She was ill at
ease, and looked more than usually stern and forbidding as she entered
the Hales’ little drawing-room.

Margaret was busy embroidering a small piece of cambric for some little
article of dress for Edith’s expected baby--“Flimsy, useless work,” as
Mrs. Thornton observed to herself. She liked Mrs. Hale’s double knitting
far better; that was sensible of its kind. The room altogether was full
of knick-knacks, which must take a long time to dust; and time to people
of limited income was money.

She made all these reflections as she was talking in her stately way to
Mrs. Hale, and uttering all the stereotyped commonplaces that most
people can find to say with their senses blindfolded. Mrs. Hale was
making rather more exertion in her answers, captivated by some real old
lace which Mrs. Thornton wore; “lace,” as she afterwards observed to
Dixon, “of that old English point which has not been made for this
seventy years, and which cannot be bought. It must have been an
heir-loom, and shows that she had ancestors.” So the owner of the
ancestral lace became worthy of something more than the languid exertion
to be agreeable to a visitor, by which Mrs. Hale’s efforts at
conversation would have been otherwise bounded. And presently, Margaret,
racking her brain to talk to Fanny, heard her mother and Mrs. Thornton
plunge into the interminable subject of servants.

“I suppose you are not musical,” said Fanny, “as I see no piano.”

“I am fond of hearing good music; I cannot play well myself; and papa
and mamma don’t care much about it; so we sold our old piano when we
came here.”

“I wonder how you can exist without one. It almost seems to me a
necessary of life.”

“Fifteen shillings a week, and three saved out of them!” thought
Margaret to herself. “But she must have been very young. She probably
has forgotten her own personal experience. But she must know of those
days.” Margaret’s manner had an extra tinge of coldness in it when she
next spoke.

“You have good concerts here, I believe.”

“Oh, yes! Delicious! Too crowded, that is the worst. The directors admit
so indiscriminately. But one is sure to hear the newest music there. I
always have a large order to give to Johnson’s, the day after a
concert.”

“Do you like new music simply for its newness, then?”

“Oh; one knows it is the fashion in London, or else the singers would
not bring it down here. You have been in London, of course.”

“Yes,” said Margaret, “I have lived there for several years.”

“Oh! London and the Alhambra are the two places I long to see!”

“London and the Alhambra!”

“Yes! ever since I read the Tales of the Alhambra. Don’t you know them?”

“I don’t think I do. But surely, it is a very easy journey to London.”

“Yes; but somehow,” said Fanny, lowering her voice, “mamma has never
been to London herself, and can’t understand my longing. She is very
proud of Milton; dirty, smoky place as I feel it to be. I believe she
admires it the more for those very qualities.”

“If it has been Mrs. Thornton’s home for some years, I can well
understand her loving it,” said Margaret, in her clear, bell-like voice.

“What are you saying about me, Miss Hale? May I inquire?”

Margaret had not the words ready for an answer to this question, which
took her a little by surprise, so Miss Thornton replied:

“Oh, mamma! we are only trying to account for your being so fond of
Milton.”

“Thank you,” said Mrs. Thornton. “I do not feel that my very natural
liking for the place where I was born and brought up,--and which has
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