North and South Page #36

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

								

Thornton’s call. Your mother is not very well, and thinks she cannot
walk so far; but you and I will go this afternoon.”

As they went, Mr. Hale began about his wife’s health, with a kind of
veiled anxiety, which Margaret was glad to see awakened at last.

“Did you consult the doctor, Margaret? Did you send for him?”

“No, papa, you spoke of his coming to see me. Now I was well. But if I
only knew of some good doctor, I would go this afternoon, and ask him to
come, for I am sure mamma is seriously indisposed.”

She put the truth thus plainly and strongly because her father had so
completely shut his mind against the idea, when she had last named her
fears. But now the case was changed. He answered in a despondent tone:

“Do you think she has any hidden complaint? Do you think she is really
very ill? Has Dixon said anything? Oh, Margaret! I am haunted by the
fear that our coming to Milton has killed her. My poor Maria!”

“Oh, papa! don’t imagine such things,” said Margaret, shocked. “She is
not well, that is all. Many a one is not well for a time; and with good
advice gets better and stronger than ever.”

“But has Dixon said anything about her?”

“No! You know Dixon enjoys making a mystery out of trifles; and she has
been a little mysterious about mamma’s health, which has alarmed me
rather, that is all. Without any reason I dare say. You know, papa, you
said the other day I was getting fanciful.”

“I hope and trust you are. But don’t think of what I said then. I like
you to be fanciful about your mother’s health! Don’t be afraid of
telling me your fancies. I like to hear them, though I dare say, I spoke
as if I was annoyed. But we will ask Mrs. Thornton if she can tell us of
a good doctor. We won’t throw away our money on any but some one
first-rate. Stay, we turn up this street.”

The street did not look as if it could contain any house large enough
for Mrs. Thornton’s habitation. Her son’s presence never gave any
impression as to the kind of house he lived in; but, unconsciously,
Margaret had imagined that tall, massive, handsomely dressed Mrs.
Thornton must live in a house of the same character as herself. Now
Marlborough Street consisted of long rows of small houses, with a blank
wall here and there; at least that was all they could see from the point
at which they entered it.

“He told me he lived in Marlborough Street, I’m sure,” said Mr. Hale,
with a much perplexed air.

“Perhaps it is one of the economies he still practises, to live in a
very small house. But here are plenty of people about; let me ask.”

She accordingly inquired of a passer-by, and was informed that Mr.
Thornton lived close to the mill, and had the factory lodge-door pointed
out to her, at the end of the long dead wall they had noticed.

The lodge-door was like a common garden-door; on one side of it were
great closed gates for the ingress and egress of lorries and wagons. The
lodge-keeper admitted them into a great oblong yard, on one side of
which were offices for the transaction of business; on the opposite, an
immense many-windowed mill, whence proceeded the continual clank of
machinery and the long groaning roar of the steam-engine, enough to
deafen those who lived within the enclosure. Opposite to the wall, along
which the street ran, on one of the narrow sides of the oblong, was a
handsome stone-coped house,--blackened, to be sure, by the smoke, but
with paint, windows, and steps kept scrupulously clean. It was evidently
a house which had been built some fifty or sixty years. The stone
facings--the long, narrow windows, and the number of them--the flights
of steps up to the front door, ascending from either side, and guarded
by railing--all witnessed to its age. Margaret only wondered why people
who could afford to live in so good a house, and keep it in such perfect
order, did not prefer a much smaller dwelling in the country, or even
some suburb; not in the continual whirl and din of the factory. Her
unaccustomed ears could hardly catch her father’s voice, as they stood
on the steps awaiting the opening of the door. The yard, too, with the
great doors in the dead wall as a boundary, was but a dismal look-out
for the sitting-rooms of the house--as Margaret found when they had
mounted the old-fashioned stairs, and been ushered into the
drawing-room, the three windows of which went over the front door and
the room on the right-hand side of the entrance. There was no one in the
drawing-room. It seemed as though no one had been in it since the day
when the furniture was bagged up with as much care as if the house was
to be overwhelmed with lava, and discovered a thousand years hence. The
walls were pink and gold; the pattern on the carpet represented bunches
of flowers on a light ground, but it was carefully covered up in the
centre by a linen drugget, glazed and colourless. The window-curtains
were lace; each chair and sofa had its own particular veil of netting or
knitting. Great alabaster groups occupied every flat surface, safe from
dust under their glass shades. In the middle of the room, right under
the bagged-up chandelier, was a large circular table, with smartly-bound
books arranged at regular intervals round the circumference of its
polished surface, like gaily coloured spokes of a wheel. Everything
reflected light, nothing absorbed it. The whole room had a painfully
spotted, spangled, speckled look about it, which impressed Margaret so
unpleasantly that she was hardly conscious of the peculiar cleanliness
required to keep everything so white and pure in such an atmosphere, or
of the trouble that must be willingly expended to secure that effect of
icy, snowy discomfort. Wherever she looked there was evidence of care
and labour, but not care and labour to procure ease, to help on habits
of tranquil home employment; solely to ornament and then to preserve
ornament from dirt or destruction.

They had leisure to observe, and to speak to each other in low voices,
before Mrs. Thornton appeared. They were talking of what all the world
might hear; but it is a common effect of such a room as this to make
people speak low, as if unwilling to awaken the unused echoes.

At last Mrs. Thornton came in, rustling in handsome black silk, as was
her wont; her muslins and laces rivalling, not excelling, the pure
whiteness of the muslins and netting of the room. Margaret explained how
it was that her mother could not accompany them to return Mrs.
Thornton’s call; but in her anxiety not to bring back her father’s fears
too vividly, she gave but a bungling account, and left the impression on
Mrs. Thornton’s mind that Mrs. Hale’s was some temporary or fanciful
fine-ladyish indisposition, which might have been put aside had there
been a strong enough motive; or that if it was too severe to allow her
to come out that day, the call might have been deferred. Remembering,
too, the horses to her carriage, hired for her own visit to the Hales,
and how Fanny had been ordered to go by Mr. Thornton, in order to pay
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