North and South Page #8

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

								

looking perfectly innocent and unconscious. He was glad of it, for the
speech had slipped from him unawares--a rare thing in the case of a man
who premeditated his actions so much as Henry Lennox.

The aspect of home was all right and bright when they reached it. The
clouds on her mother’s brow had cleared off under the propitious
influence of a brace of carp, most opportunely presented by a neighbour.
Mr. Hale had returned from his morning’s round, and was awaiting his
visitor just outside the wicket gate that led into the garden. He looked
a complete gentleman in his rather threadbare coat and well-worn hat.
Margaret was proud of her father; she had always a fresh and tender
pride in seeing how favourably he impressed every stranger; still her
quick eye sought over his face and found there traces of some unusual
disturbance, which was only put aside, not cleared away.

Mr. Hale asked to look at their sketches.

“I think you have made the tints on the thatch too dark, have you not?”
as he returned Margaret’s to her, and held out his hand for Mr.
Lennox’s, which was withheld from him one moment, no more.

“No, papa! I don’t think I have. The house-leek and stone-crop have
grown so much darker in the rain. Is it not like, papa?” said she,
peeping over his shoulder, as he looked at the figures in Mr. Lennox’s
drawing.

“Yes, very like. Your figure and way of holding yourself is capital. And
it is just poor old Isaac’s stiff way of stooping his long rheumatic
back. What is this hanging from the branch of the tree? Not a bird’s
nest, surely.”

“Oh no! that is my bonnet. I never can draw with my bonnet on; it makes
my head so hot. I wonder if I could manage figures. There are so many
people about here whom I should like to sketch.”

“I should say that a likeness you very much wish to take you would
always succeed in,” said Mr. Lennox. “I have great faith in the power of
will. I think myself I have succeeded pretty well in yours.” Mr. Hale
had preceded them into the house, while Margaret was lingering to pluck
some roses, with which to adorn her morning gown for dinner.

“A regular London girl would understand the implied meaning of that
speech,” thought Mr. Lennox. “She would be up to looking through every
speech that a young man made her for the arrière-pensée of a compliment.
But I don’t believe Margaret,--Stay!” exclaimed he, “Let me help you;”
and he gathered for her some velvety cramoisy roses that were above her
reach, and then dividing the spoil he placed two in his button-hole, and
sent her in, pleased and happy, to arrange her flowers.

The conversation at dinner flowed on quietly and agreeably. There were
plenty of questions to be asked on both sides--the latest intelligence
which each could give of Mrs. Shaw’s movements in Italy to be exchanged;
and in the interest of what was said, the unpretending simplicity of the
parsonage-ways--above all in the neighbourhood of Margaret, Mr. Lennox
forgot the little feeling of disappointment with which he had at first
perceived that she had spoken but the simple truth when she had
described her father’s living as very small.

“Margaret, my child, you might have gathered us some pears for our
dessert,” said Mr. Hale, as the hospitable luxury of a freshly-decanted
bottle of wine was placed on the table.

Mrs. Hale was hurried. It seemed as if desserts were impromptu and
unusual things at the parsonage; whereas, if Mr. Hale would only have
looked behind him, he would have seen biscuits and marmalade, and what
not, all arranged in formal order on the side-board. But the idea of
pears had taken possession of Mr. Hale’s mind, and was not to be got rid
of.

“There are a few brown beurrés against the south wall which are worth
all foreign fruits and preserves. Run, Margaret, and gather some.”

“I propose that we adjourn into the garden, and eat them there,” said
Mr. Lennox. “Nothing is so delicious as to set one’s teeth into the
crisp, juicy fruit, warm and scented by the sun. The worst is, the wasps
are impudent enough to dispute it with one, even at the very crisis and
summit of enjoyment.”

He rose, as if to follow Margaret, who had disappeared through the
window: he only awaited Mrs. Hale’s permission. She would rather have
wound up the dinner in the proper way, and with all the ceremonies which
had gone on so smoothly hitherto, especially as she and Dixon had got
out the finger-glasses from the store-room on purpose to be as correct
as became General Shaw’s widow’s sister; but as Mr. Hale got up
directly, and prepared to accompany his guest, she could only submit.

“I shall arm myself with a knife,” said Mr. Hale: “the days of eating
fruit so primitively as you describe are over with me. I must pare it
and quarter it before I can enjoy it.”

Margaret made a plate for the pears out of a beet-root leaf, which threw
up their brown gold colour admirably. Mr. Lennox looked more at her than
at the pears; but her father, inclined to cull fastidiously the very
zest and perfection of the hour he had stolen from his anxiety, chose
daintily the ripest fruit, and sat down on the garden bench to enjoy it
at his leisure. Margaret and Mr. Lennox strolled along the little
terrace-walk under the south wall, where the bees still hummed and
worked busily in their hives.

“What a perfect life you seem to live here! I have always felt rather
contemptuously towards the poets before, with their wishes, ‘Mine be a
cot beside a hill,’ and that sort of thing; but now I am afraid that the
truth is, I have been nothing better than a Cockney. Just now I feel as
if twenty years’ hard study of law would be amply rewarded by one year
of such an exquisite serene life as this--such skies!” looking up--“such
crimson and amber foliage, so perfectly motionless as that!” pointing to
some of the great forest trees which shut in the garden as if it were a
nest.

“You must please to remember that our skies are not always as deep a
blue as they are now. We have rain, and our leaves do fall, and get
sodden: though I think Helstone is about as perfect a place as any in
the world. Recollect how you rather scorned my description of it one
evening in Harley Street: ‘a village in a tale.’”

“Scorned, Margaret! That is rather a hard word.”

“Perhaps it is. Only I know I should have liked to have talked to you of
what I was very full at the time, and you--what must I call it
then?--spoke disrespectfully of Helstone as a mere village in a tale.”

“I will never do so again,” said he, warmly. They turned the corner of
the walk.

“I could almost wish, Margaret----” he stopped and hesitated. It was so
unusual for the fluent lawyer to hesitate that Margaret looked up at
him, in a little state of questioning wonder; but in an instant--from
what about him she could not tell--she wished herself back with her
mother--her father--anywhere away from him, for she was sure he was
going to say something to which she should not know what to reply. In
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