North and South Page #9

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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another moment the strong pride that was in her came to conquer her
sudden agitation, which she hoped he had not perceived. Of course she
could answer, and answer the right thing; and it was poor and despicable
of her to shrink from hearing any speech, as if she had not power to put
an end to it with her high maidenly dignity.

“Margaret,” said he, taking her by surprise, and getting sudden
possession of her hand, so that she was forced to stand still and
listen, despising herself for the fluttering at her heart all the time;
“Margaret, I wish you did not like Helstone so much--did not seem so
perfectly calm and happy here. I have been hoping for these three months
past to find you regretting London--and London friends, a little--enough
to make you listen more kindly” (for she was quietly, but firmly,
striving to extricate her hand from his grasp) “to one who has not much
to offer, it is true--nothing but prospects in the future--but who does
love you, Margaret, almost in spite of himself. Margaret, have I
startled you too much? Speak!” For he saw her lips quivering almost as
if she were going to cry. She made a strong effort to be calm; she would
not speak till she had succeeded in mastering her voice, and then she
said:

“I was startled. I did not know that you cared for me in that way. I
have always thought of you as a friend; and, please, I would rather go
on thinking of you so. I don’t like to be spoken to as you have been
doing. I cannot answer you as you want me to do, and yet I should feel
so sorry if I vexed you.”

“Margaret,” said he, looking into her eyes, which met his with their
open, straight look, expressive of the utmost good faith and reluctance
to give pain, “Do you”--he was going to say--“love any one else?” But it
seemed as if this question would be an insult to the pure serenity of
those eyes. “Forgive me! I have been too abrupt. I am punished. Only let
me hope. Give me the poor comfort of telling me you have never seen any
one whom you could----” Again a pause. He could not end his sentence.
Margaret reproached herself acutely as the cause of his distress.

“Ah! if you had but never got this fancy into your head! It was such a
pleasure to think of you as a friend.”

“But I may hope, may I not, Margaret, that some time you will think of
me as a lover? Not yet, I see--there is no hurry--but some time----”

She was silent for a minute or two, trying to discover the truth as it
was in her own heart, before replying, then she said:

“I have never thought of--you, but as a friend. I like to think of you
so; but I am sure I could never think of you as anything else. Pray let
us both forget that all this” (“disagreeable,” she was going to say, but
stopped short) “conversation has taken place.”

He paused before he replied. Then, in his habitual coldness of tone, he
answered:

“Of course, as your feelings are so decided, and as this conversation
has been so evidently unpleasant to you, it had better not be
remembered. That is all very fine in theory, that plan of forgetting
whatever is painful, but it will be somewhat difficult for me, at least,
to carry it into execution.”

“You are vexed,” said she, sadly; “yet how can I help it?”

She looked so truly grieved as she said this, that he struggled for a
moment with his real disappointment, and then answered more cheerfully,
but still with a little hardness in his tone:

“You should make allowances for the mortification, not only of a lover,
Margaret, but of a man not given to romance in general--prudent,
worldly, as some people call me--who has been carried out of his usual
habits by the force of a passion--well, we will say no more of that; but
in the one outlet which he has formed for the deeper and better feelings
of his nature, he meets with rejection and repulse. I shall have to
console myself with scorning my own folly. A struggling barrister to
think of matrimony!”

Margaret could not answer this. The whole tone of it annoyed her. It
seemed to touch on and call out all the points of difference which had
often repelled her in him; while yet he was the pleasantest man, the
most sympathising friend, the person of all others who understood her
best in Harley Street. She felt a tinge of contempt mingle itself with
her pain at having refused him. Her beautiful lip curled in a slight
disdain. It was well that, having made the round of the garden, they
came suddenly upon Mr. Hale, whose whereabouts had been quite forgotten
by them. He had not yet finished the pear, which he had delicately
peeled in one long strip of silver-paper thinness, and which he was
enjoying in a deliberate manner. It was like the story of the eastern
king, who dipped his head into a basin of water, at the magician’s
command, and ere he instantly took it out went through the experience of
a lifetime. Margaret felt stunned, and unable to recover her
self-possession enough to join in the trivial conversation that ensued
between her father and Mr. Lennox. She was grave, and little disposed to
speak; full of wonder when Mr. Lennox would go, and allow her to relax
into thought on the events of the last quarter of an hour. He was almost
as anxious to take his departure as she was for him to leave; but a few
minutes light and careless talking, carried on at whatever effort, was a
sacrifice which he owed to his mortified vanity, or his self-respect. He
glanced from time to time at her sad and pensive face.

“I am not so indifferent to her as she believes,” thought he to himself.
“I do not give up hope.”

Before a quarter of an hour was over, he had fallen into a way of
conversing with quiet sarcasm; speaking of life in London and life in
the country, as if he were conscious of his second mocking self, and
afraid of his own satire. Mr. Hale was puzzled. His visitor was a
different man to what he had seen him before at the wedding-breakfast,
and at dinner to-day; a lighter, cleverer, more worldly man, and, as
such, dissonant to Mr. Hale. It was a relief to all three when Mr.
Lennox said that he must go directly if he meant to catch the five
o’clock train. They proceeded to the house to find Mrs. Hale, and wish
her good-bye. At the last moment, Henry Lennox’s real self broke through
the crust.

“Margaret, don’t despise me; I have a heart, notwithstanding all this
good-for-nothing way of talking. As a proof of it, I believe I love you
more than ever--if I do not hate you--for the disdain with which you
have listened to me during this last half-hour. Good-bye,
Margaret--Margaret!”




CHAPTER IV.

DOUBTS AND DIFFICULTIES.

    “Cast me upon some naked shore,
    Where I may tracke
    Only the print of some sad wracke,
    If thou be there though the seas roare,
    I shall no gentler calm implore.”
              HABINGTON.


He was gone. The house was shut up for the evening. No more deep blue
skies or crimson and amber tints. Margaret went up to dress for the
early tea, finding Dixon in a pretty temper from the interruption which
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