North and South Page #6

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

								

aloud to her, while she worked. At one time they had tried backgammon as
a resource; but as Mr. Hale grew to take an increasing interest in his
school and his parishioners, he found that the interruptions which arose
out of these duties were regarded as hardships by his wife, not to be
accepted as the natural conditions of his profession, but to be
regretted and struggled against by her as they severally arose. So he
withdrew, while the children were yet young, into his library, to spend
his evenings (if he were at home), in reading the speculative and
metaphysical books which were his delight.

When Margaret had been here before, she had brought down with her a
great box of books, recommended by masters or governess, and had found
the summer’s day all too short to get through the reading she had to do
before her return to town. Now there were only the well-bound,
little-read English Classics, which were weeded out of her father’s
library to fill up the small book-shelves in the drawing-room. Thomson’s
Season’s, Hayley’s Cowper, Middleton’s Cicero, were by far the lightest,
newest, and most amusing. The book-shelves did not afford much resource.
Margaret told her mother every particular of her London life, to all of
which Mrs. Hale listened with interest, sometimes amused and
questioning, at others a little inclined to compare her sister’s
circumstances of ease and comfort with the narrower means at Helstone
Vicarage. On such evenings Margaret was apt to stop talking rather
abruptly, and listen to the drip-drip of the rain upon the leads of the
little bow window. Once or twice Margaret found herself mechanically
counting the repetition of the monotonous sound, while she wondered if
she might venture to put a question on a subject very near to her heart,
and ask where Frederick was now; what he was doing; how long it was
since they had heard from him. But a consciousness that her mother’s
delicate health and positive dislike to Helstone, all dated from the
time of the mutiny in which Frederick had been engaged--the full account
of which Margaret had never heard, and which now seemed doomed to be
buried in sad oblivion,--made her pause and turn away from the subject
each time she approached it. When she was with her mother, her father
seemed the best person to apply to for information; and when with him,
she thought that she could speak more easily to her mother. Probably
there was nothing much to be heard that was new. In one of the letters
she had received before leaving Harley Street, her father had told her
that they had heard from Frederick; he was still at Rio, and very well
in health, and sent his best love to her; which was dry bones, but not
the living intelligence she longed for. Frederick was always spoken of,
in the rare times when his name was mentioned, as “Poor Frederick.” His
room was kept exactly as he had left it; and was regularly dusted, and
put into order by Dixon, Mrs. Hale’s maid, who touched no other part of
the household work, but always remembered the day when she had been
engaged by Lady Beresford as ladies’ maid to Sir John’s wards, the
pretty Miss Beresfords, the belles of Rutlandshire. Dixon had always
considered Mr. Hale as the blight which had fallen upon her young lady’s
prospects in life. If Miss Beresford had not been in such a hurry to
marry a poor country clergyman there was no knowing what she might have
become. But Dixon was too loyal to desert her in her affliction and
downfall (alas, her married life). She remained with her, and was
devoted to her interests; always considering herself as the good and
protecting fairy, whose duty it was to baffle the malignant giant, Mr.
Hale. Master Frederick had been her favourite and pride; and it was with
a little softening of her dignified look and manner, that she went in
weekly to arrange the chamber as carefully as if he might be coming home
that very evening.

Margaret could not help believing that there had been some late
intelligence of Frederick, unknown to her mother, which was making her
father anxious and uneasy. Mrs. Hale did not seem to perceive any
alteration in her husband’s looks or ways. His spirits were tender and
gentle, readily affected by any small piece of intelligence concerning
the welfare of others. He would be depressed for many days after
witnessing a death-bed, or hearing of any crime. But now Margaret
noticed an absence of mind, as if his thoughts were pre-occupied by some
subject, the oppression of which could not be relieved by any daily
action, such as comforting the survivors, or teaching at the school in
hope of lessening the evils in the generation to come. Mr. Hale did not
go out among his parishioners as much as usual; he was more shut up in
his study; was anxious for the village postman, whose summons to the
household was a rap on the back-kitchen window shutter--a signal which
at one time had often to be repeated before any one was sufficiently
alive to the hour of the day to understand what it was, and attend to
him. Now Mr. Hale loitered about the garden if the morning was fine, and
if not, stood dreamily by the study window until the postman had called,
or gone down the lane, giving a half-respectful, half-confidential shake
of the head to the parson, who watched him away from the sweet-briar
hedge, and past the great arbutus, before he turned into the room to
begin his day’s work, with all the signs of a heavy heart and an
occupied mind.

But Margaret was at an age when any apprehension, not absolutely based
on a knowledge of facts, is easily banished for a time by a bright sunny
day, or some happy outward circumstance. And when the brilliant fourteen
fine days of October came on, her cares were all blown away as lightly
as thistledown, and she thought of nothing but the glories of the
forest. The fern-harvest was over; and now that the rain was gone, many
a deep glade was accessible, into which Margaret had only peeped in July
and August weather. She had learnt drawing with Edith; and she had
sufficiently regretted, during the gloom of the bad weather, her idle
revelling in the beauty of the woodlands, while it had yet been fine, to
make her determined to sketch what she could before winter fairly set
in. Accordingly, she was busy preparing her board one morning, when
Sarah, the housemaid, threw wide open the drawing-room door, and
announced, “Mr. Henry Lennox.”




CHAPTER III.

“THE MORE HASTE THE WORSE SPEED.”

    “Learn to win a lady’s faith
      Nobly, as the thing is high;
    Bravely, as for life and death--
      With a loyal gravity.

    Lead her from the festive boards,
      Point her to the starry skies,
    Guard her, by your truthful words,
      Pure from courtship’s flatteries.”
                       MRS. BROWNING.


“Mr. Henry Lennox.” Margaret had been thinking of him only a moment
before, and remembering his inquiry into her probable occupations at
home. It was “parler du soleil et l’on en voit les rayons;” and the
								Rate this book:0.0 / 0 votes