North and South - Elizabeth Gaskell (popular books to read .TXT) 📗
- Author: Elizabeth Gaskell
- Performer: 0140434240
Book online «North and South - Elizabeth Gaskell (popular books to read .TXT) 📗». Author Elizabeth Gaskell
‘Mamma, I will write to-night, and tell Frederick what you say. I am as sure that he will come directly to us, as I am sure of my life. Be easy, mamma, you shall see him as far as anything earthly can be promised.’
‘You will write to-night? Oh, Margaret! the post goes out at five—you will write by it, won’t you? I have so few hours left—I feel, dear, as if I should not recover, though sometimes your father over-persuades me into hoping; you will write directly, won’t you? Don’t lose a single post; for just by that very post I may miss him.’
‘But, mamma, papa is out.’
‘Papa is out! and what then? Do you mean that he would deny me this last wish, Margaret? Why, I should not be ill—be dying—if he had not taken me away from Helstone, to this unhealthy, smoky, sunless place.’
‘Oh, mamma!’ said Margaret.
‘Yes; it is so, indeed. He knows it himself; he has said so many a time. He would do anything for me; you don’t mean he would refuse me this last wish—prayer, if you will. And, indeed, Margaret, the longing to see Frederick stands between me and God. I cannot pray till I have this one thing; indeed, I cannot. Don’t lose time, dear, dear Margaret. Write by this very next post. Then he may be here—here in twenty-two days! For he is sure to come. No cords or chains can keep him. In twenty-two days I shall see my boy.’ She fell back, and for a short time she took no notice of the fact that Margaret sat motionless, her hand shading her eyes.
‘You are not writing!’ said her mother at last ‘Bring me some pens and paper; I will try and write myself.’ She sat up, trembling all over with feverish eagerness. Margaret took her hand down and looked at her mother sadly.
‘Only wait till papa comes in. Let us ask him how best to do it.’
‘You promised, Margaret, not a quarter of an hour ago;—you said he should come.’
‘And so he shall, mamma; don’t cry, my own dear mother. I’ll write here, now,—you shall see me write,—and it shall go by this very post; and if papa thinks fit, he can write again when he comes in,—it is only a day’s delay. Oh, mamma, don’t cry so pitifully,—it cuts me to the heart.’
Mrs. Hale could not stop her tears; they came hysterically; and, in truth, she made no effort to control them, but rather called up all the pictures of the happy past, and the probable future—painting the scene when she should lie a corpse, with the son she had longed to see in life weeping over her, and she unconscious of his presence—till she was melted by self-pity into a state of sobbing and exhaustion that made Margaret’s heart ache. But at last she was calm, and greedily watched her daughter, as she began her letter; wrote it with swift urgent entreaty; sealed it up hurriedly, for fear her mother should ask to see it: and then, to make security most sure, at Mrs. Hale’s own bidding, took it herself to the post-office. She was coming home when her father overtook her.
‘And where have you been, my pretty maid?’ asked he.
‘To the post-office,—with a letter; a letter to Frederick. Oh, papa, perhaps I have done wrong: but mamma was seized with such a passionate yearning to see him—she said it would make her well again,—and then she said that she must see him before she died,—I cannot tell you how urgent she was! Did I do wrong?’ Mr. Hale did not reply at first. Then he said:
‘You should have waited till I came in, Margaret.’
‘I tried to persuade her—’ and then she was silent.
‘I don’t know,’ said Mr. Hale, after a pause. ‘She ought to see him if she wishes it so much, for I believe it would do her much more good than all the doctor’s medicine,—and, perhaps, set her up altogether; but the danger to him, I’m afraid, is very great.’
‘All these years since the mutiny, papa?’
‘Yes; it is necessary, of course, for government to take very stringent measures for the repression of offences against authority, more particularly in the navy, where a commanding officer needs to be surrounded in his men’s eyes with a vivid consciousness of all the power there is at home to back him, and take up his cause, and avenge any injuries offered to him, if need be. Ah! it’s no matter to them how far their authorities have tyrannised,—galled hasty tempers to madness,—or, if that can be any excuse afterwards, it is never allowed for in the first instance; they spare no expense, they send out ships,—they scour the seas to lay hold of the offenders,—the lapse of years does not wash out the memory of the offence,—it is a fresh and vivid crime on the Admiralty books till it is blotted out by blood.’
‘Oh, papa, what have I done! And yet it seemed so right at the time. I’m sure Frederick himself, would run the risk.’
‘So he would; so he should! Nay, Margaret, I’m glad it is done, though I durst not have done it myself. I’m thankful it is as it is; I should have hesitated till, perhaps, it might have been too late to do any good. Dear Margaret, you have done what is right about it; and the end is beyond our control.’
It was all very well; but her father’s account of the relentless manner in which mutinies were punished made Margaret shiver and creep. If she had decoyed her brother home to blot out the memory of his error by his blood! She saw her father’s anxiety lay deeper than the source of his latter cheering words. She took his arm and walked home pensively and wearily by his side.
MOTHER AND SON
‘I have found that holy place of rest Still changeless.’ MRS. HEMANS.
When Mr. Thornton had left the house that morning he was almost blinded by his baffled passion. He was as dizzy as if Margaret, instead of looking, and speaking, and moving like a tender graceful woman, had been a sturdy fish-wife, and given him a sound blow with her fists. He had positive bodily pain,—a violent headache, and a throbbing intermittent pulse. He could not bear the noise, the garish light, the continued rumble and movement of the street. He called himself a fool for suffering so; and yet he could not, at the moment, recollect the cause of his suffering, and whether it was adequate to the consequences it had produced. It would have been a relief to him, if he could have sat down and cried on a door-step by a little child, who was raging and storming, through his passionate tears, at some injury he had received. He said to himself, that he hated Margaret, but a wild, sharp sensation of love cleft his dull, thunderous feeling like lightning, even as he shaped the words expressive of hatred. His greatest comfort was in hugging his torment; and in feeling, as he had indeed said to her, that though she might despise him, contemn him, treat him with her proud sovereign indifference, he did not change one whit. She could not make him change. He loved her, and would love her; and defy her, and this miserable bodily pain.
He stood still for a moment, to make this resolution firm and clear. There was an omnibus passing—going into the country; the conductor thought he was wishing for a place, and stopped near the pavement. It was too much trouble to apologise and explain; so he mounted upon it, and was borne away,—past long rows of houses—then past detached villas with trim gardens, till they came to real country hedge-rows, and, by-and-by, to a small country town. Then every body got down; and so did Mr. Thornton, and because they walked away he did so too. He went into the fields, walking briskly, because the sharp motion relieved his mind. He could remember all about it now; the pitiful figure he must have cut; the absurd way in which he had gone and done the very thing he had so often agreed with himself in thinking would be the most foolish thing in the world; and had met with exactly the consequences which, in these wise moods, he had always foretold were certain to follow, if he ever did make such a fool of himself. Was he bewitched by those beautiful eyes, that soft, half-open, sighing mouth which lay so close upon his shoulder only yesterday? He could not even shake off the recollection that she had been there; that her arms had been round him, once—if never again. He only caught glimpses of her; he did not understand her altogether. At one time she was so brave, and at another so timid; now so tender, and then so haughty and regal-proud. And then he thought over every time he had ever seen her once again, by way of finally forgetting her. He saw her in every dress, in every mood, and did not know which became her best. Even this morning, how magnificent she had looked,—her eyes flashing out upon him at the idea that, because she had shared his danger yesterday, she had cared for him the least!
If Mr. Thornton was a fool in the morning, as he assured himself at least twenty times he was, he did not grow much wiser in the afternoon. All that he gained in return for his sixpenny omnibus ride, was a more vivid conviction that there never was, never could be, any one like Margaret; that she did not love him and never would; but that she—no! nor the whole world—should never hinder him from loving her. And so he returned to the little market-place, and remounted the omnibus to return to Milton.
It was late in the afternoon when he was set down, near his warehouse. The accustomed places brought back the accustomed habits and trains of thought. He knew how much he had to do—more than his usual work, owing to the commotion of the day before. He had to see his brother magistrates; he had to complete the arrangements, only half made in the morning, for the comfort and safety of his newly imported Irish hands; he had to secure them from all chance of communication with the discontented workpeople of Milton. Last of all, he had to go home and encounter his mother.
Mrs. Thornton had sat in the dining-room all day, every moment expecting the news of her son’s acceptance by Miss Hale. She had braced herself up many and many a time, at some sudden noise in the house; had caught up the half-dropped work, and begun to ply her needle diligently, though through dimmed spectacles, and with an unsteady hand! and many times had the door opened, and some indifferent person entered on some insignificant errand. Then her rigid face unstiffened from its gray frost-bound expression, and the features dropped into the relaxed look of despondency, so unusual to their sternness. She wrenched herself away from the contemplation of all the dreary changes that would be brought about to herself by her son’s marriage; she forced her thoughts into the accustomed household grooves. The newly-married couple-to-be would need fresh
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