North and South Page #4

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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never liked to do anything from the open and acknowledged motive of her
own good will and pleasure; she preferred being compelled to gratify
herself by some other person’s command or desire. She really did
persuade herself that she was submitting to some hard external
necessity; and thus she was able to moan and complain in her soft
manner, all the time she was in reality doing just what she liked.

It was in this way she began to speak of her own journey to Captain
Lennox, who assented, as in duty bound, to all his future mother-in-law
said, while his eyes sought Edith, who was busying herself in
re-arranging the tea-table, and ordering up all sorts of good things in
spite of his assurances that he had dined within the last two hours.

Mr. Henry Lennox stood leaning against the chimney-piece, amused with
the family scene. He was close by his handsome brother; he was the plain
one in a singularly good-looking family; but his face was intelligent,
keen, and mobile; and now and then Margaret wondered what it was that he
could be thinking about, while he kept silence, but was evidently
observing, with an interest that was slightly sarcastic, all that Edith
and she were doing. The sarcastic feeling was called out by Mrs. Shaw’s
conversation with his brother; it was separate from the interest which
was excited by what he saw. He thought it a pretty sight to see the two
cousins so busy in their little arrangements about the table. Edith
chose to do most herself. She was in a humour to enjoy showing her lover
how well she could behave as a soldier’s wife. She found out that the
water in the urn was cold, and ordered up the great kitchen tea-kettle;
the only consequence of which was that when she met it at the door, and
tried to carry it in, it was too heavy for her, and she came in pouting,
with a black mark on her muslin gown, and a little round white hand
indented by the handle, which she took to show to Captain Lennox, just
like a hurt child, and, of course, the remedy was the same in both
cases. Margaret’s quickly-adjusted spirit-lamp was the most efficacious
contrivance, though not so like the gypsy-encampment which Edith, in
some of her moods, chose to consider the nearest resemblance to a
barrack-life.

After this evening all was bustle till the wedding was over.




CHAPTER II.

ROSES AND THORNS.

    “By the soft green light in the woody glade,
    On the banks of moss where thy childhood played
    By the household tree, thro’ which thine eye
    First looked in love to the summer sky.”
                  MRS. HEMANS.


Margaret was once more in her morning dress, travelling quietly home
with her father, who had come up to assist at the wedding. Her mother
had been detained at home by a multitude of half-reasons, none of which
anybody fully understood, except Mr. Hale, who was perfectly aware that
all his arguments in favour of a grey satin gown, which was midway
between oldness and newness, had proved unavailing; and that, as he had
not the money to equip his wife afresh, from top to toe, she would not
show herself at her only sister’s only child’s wedding. If Mrs. Shaw had
guessed at the real reason why Mrs. Hale did not accompany her husband,
she would have showered down gowns upon her; but it was nearly twenty
years since Mrs. Shaw had been the poor pretty Miss Beresford, and she
had really forgotten all grievances except that of the unhappiness
arising from disparity of age in married life, on which she could
descant by the half-hour. Dearest Maria had married the man of her
heart, only eight years older than herself, with the sweetest temper,
and that blue black hair one so seldom sees. Mr. Hale was one of the
most delightful preachers she had ever heard, and a perfect model of a
parish priest. Perhaps it was not quite a logical deduction from all
these premises, but it was still Mrs. Shaw’s characteristic conclusion,
as she thought over her sister’s lot: “Married for love, what can
dearest Maria have to wish for in this world?” Mrs. Hale, if she spoke
truth, might have answered with a ready-made list, “a silver-grey glacé
silk, a white chip bonnet, oh! dozens of things for the wedding, and
hundreds of things for the house.”

Margaret only knew that her mother had not found it convenient to come,
and she was not sorry to think that their meeting and greeting would
take place at Helstone parsonage, rather than, during the confusion of
the last two or three days, in the house in Harley Street, where she
herself had had to play the part of Figaro, and was wanted everywhere at
one and the same time. Her mind and body ached now with the recollection
of all she had done and said within the last forty-eight hours. The
farewells so hurriedly taken, amongst all the other good-byes, of those
she had lived with so long, oppressed her now with a sad regret for the
times that were no more; it did not signify what those times had been,
they were gone never to return. Margaret’s heart felt more heavy than
she could ever have thought it possible in going to her own dear home,
the place and the life she had longed for for years--at that time of all
times for yearning and longing, just before the sharp senses lose their
outlines in sleep. She took her mind away with a wrench from the
recollection of the past to the bright serene contemplation of the
hopeful future. Her eyes began to see, not visions of what had been, but
the sight actually before her; her dear father leaning back asleep in
the railway carriage. His blue-black hair was grey now, and lay thinly
over his brows. The bones of his face were plainly to be seen--too
plainly for beauty, if his features had been less finely cut; as it was,
they had a grace if not a comeliness of their own. The face was in
repose; but it was rather rest after weariness than the serene calm of
the countenance of one who led a placid, contented life. Margaret was
painfully struck by the worn, anxious expression; and she went back over
the open and avowed circumstances of her father’s life, to find the
cause for the lines that spoke so plainly of habitual distress and
depression.

“Poor Frederick!” thought she, sighing. “Oh! if Frederick had but been a
clergyman, instead of going into the navy, and being lost to us all! I
wish I knew all about it. I never understood it from Aunt Shaw; I only
knew he could not come back to England because of that terrible affair.
Poor dear papa! how sad he looks! I am so glad I am going home, to be at
hand to comfort him and mamma.”

She was ready with a bright smile, in which there was not a trace of
fatigue, to greet her father when he awakened. He smiled back again, but
faintly, as if it were an unusual exertion. His face returned into its
lines of habitual anxiety. He had a trick of half-opening his mouth as
if to speak, which constantly unsettled the form of the lips, and gave
the face an undecided expression. But he had the same large, soft eyes
as his daughter,--eyes which moved slowly and almost grandly round in
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