North and South
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NORTH AND SOUTH.
NORTH AND SOUTH
BY
MRS. GASKELL
LONDON
WALTER SCOTT, LIMITED
PATERNOSTER SQUARE
NORTH AND SOUTH.
CHAPTER I.
“HASTE TO THE WEDDING.”
“Wooed and married and a’.”
“Edith!” said Margaret, gently, “Edith!”
But as Margaret half suspected, Edith had fallen asleep. She lay curled
up on the sofa in the back drawing-room in Harley Street looking very
lovely in her white muslin and blue ribbons. If Titania had ever been
dressed in white muslin and blue ribbons, and had fallen asleep on a
crimson damask sofa in a back drawing-room, Edith might have been taken
for her. Margaret was struck afresh by her cousin’s beauty. They had
grown up together from childhood, and all along Edith had been remarked
upon by every one, except Margaret, for her prettiness; but Margaret had
never thought about it until the last few days, when the prospect of
soon losing her companion seemed to give force to every sweet quality
and charm which Edith possessed. They had been talking about wedding
dresses and wedding ceremonies; and Captain Lennox, and what he had told
Edith about her future life at Corfu, where his regiment was stationed;
and the difficulty of keeping a piano in good tune (a difficulty which
Edith seemed to consider as one of the most formidable that could befall
her in her married life), and what gowns she should want in the visits
to Scotland, which would immediately succeed her marriage; but the
whispered tone had latterly become more drowsy; and Margaret, after a
pause of a few minutes, found, as she fancied, that in spite of the buzz
in the next room, Edith had rolled herself up into a soft ball of muslin
and ribbon, and silken curls, and gone off into a peaceful little
after-dinner nap.
Margaret had been on the point of telling her cousin of some of the
plans and visions which she entertained as to her future life in the
country parsonage, where her father and mother lived; and where her
bright holidays had always been passed, though for the last ten years
her aunt Shaw’s house had been considered as her home. But in default of
a listener, she had to brood over the change in her life silently as
heretofore. It was a happy brooding, although tinged with regret at
being separated for an indefinite time from her gentle aunt and dear
cousin. As she thought of the delight of filling the important post of
only daughter in Helstone parsonage, pieces of the conversation out of
the next room came upon her ears. Her aunt Shaw was talking to the five
or six ladies who had been dining there, and whose husbands were still
in the dining-room. They were the familiar acquaintances of the house;
neighbours whom Mrs. Shaw called friends, because she happened to dine
with them more frequently than with any other people, and because if she
or Edith wanted anything from them, or they from her, they did not
scruple to make a call at each other’s houses before luncheon. These
ladies and their husbands were invited in their capacity of friends, to
eat a farewell dinner in honour of Edith’s approaching marriage. Edith
had rather objected to this arrangement, for Captain Lennox was expected
to arrive by a late train this very evening; but, although she was a
spoiled child, she was too careless and idle to have a very strong will
of her own, and gave way when she found that her mother had absolutely
ordered those extra delicacies of the season which are always supposed
to be efficacious against immoderate grief at farewell dinners. She
contented herself by leaning back in her chair, merely playing with the
food on her plate, and looking grave and absent; while all around her
were enjoying the mots of Mr. Grey, the gentleman who always took the
bottom of the table at Mrs. Shaw’s dinner parties, and asked Edith to
give them some music in the drawing-room. Mr. Grey was particularly
agreeable over this farewell dinner, and the gentlemen staid downstairs
longer than usual. It was very well they did—to judge from the
fragments of conversation which Margaret overheard.
“I suffered too much myself; not that I was not extremely happy with the
poor dear General, but still disparity of age is a drawback; one that I
was resolved Edith should not have to encounter. Of course, without any
maternal partiality, I foresaw that the dear child was likely to marry
early; indeed, I had often said that I was sure she would be married
before she was nineteen. I had quite prophetic feeling when Captain
Lennox”—and here the voice dropped into a whisper, but Margaret could
easily supply the blank. The course of true love in Edith’s case had run
remarkably smooth. Mrs. Shaw had given way to the presentiment, as she
expressed it; and had rather urged on the marriage, although it was
below the expectations which many of Edith’s acquaintances had formed
for her, a young and pretty heiress. But Mrs. Shaw said that her only
child should marry for love,—and sighed emphatically, as if love had
not been her motive for marrying the General. Mrs. Shaw enjoyed the
romance of the present engagement rather more than her daughter. Not but
that Edith was very thoroughly and properly in love; still she would
certainly have preferred a good house in Belgravia, to all the
picturesqueness of the life which Captain Lennox described at Corfu. The
very parts which made Margaret glow as she listened, Edith pretended to
shiver and shudder at; partly for the pleasure she had in being coaxed
out of her dislike by her fond lover, and partly because anything of a
gipsy or make-shift life was really distasteful to her. Yet had any one
come with a fine house, and a fine estate, and a fine title to boot,
Edith would still have clung to Captain Lennox while the temptation
lasted; when it was over, it is possible she might have had little
qualms of ill-concealed regret that Captain Lennox could not have united
in his person everything that was desirable. In this she was but her
mother’s child; who, after deliberately marrying General Shaw with no
warmer feeling than respect for his character and establishment, was
constantly, though quietly, bemoaning her hard lot in being united to
one whom she could not love.
“I have spared no expense in her trousseau,” were the next words
Margaret heard. “She has all the beautiful Indian shawls and scarfs the
General gave to me, but which I shall never wear again.”
“She is a lucky girl,” replied another voice, which Margaret knew to be
that of Mrs. Gibson, a lady who was taking a double interest in the
conversation, from the fact of one of her daughters having been married
within the last few weeks. “Helen had set her heart upon an Indian
shawl, but really when I found what an extravagant price was asked, I
was obliged to refuse her. She will be quite envious when she hears of
Edith having Indian shawls. What kind are they? Delhi? with the lovely
little borders?”
Margaret heard her aunt’s voice again, but this time it was as if she
had raised herself up from her half-recumbent position, and were looking
into the more dimly lighted back drawing-room. “Edith! Edith!” cried
she; and then she sank as if wearied by the exertion. Margaret stepped
forward.
“Edith is asleep, Aunt Shaw. Is it anything I can do?”
All the ladies said “poor child!” on receiving this distressing
intelligence about Edith; and the minute lap-dog in Mrs. Shaw’s arms
began to bark, as if excited by the burst of pity.
“Hush, Tiny! you naughty little girl! you will waken your mistress. It
was only to ask Edith if she would tell Newton to bring down her shawls;
perhaps you would go, Margaret dear?”
Margaret went up into the old nursery at the very top of the house,
where Newton was busy getting up some laces which were required for the
wedding. While Newton went (not without a muttered grumbling) to undo
the shawls, which had already been exhibited four or five times that
day, Margaret looked round upon the nursery; the first room in that
house with which she had become familiar nine years ago, when she was
brought, all untamed from the forest, to share the home, the play, and
the lessons of her cousin Edith. She remembered the dark, dim look of
the London nursery, presided over by an austere and ceremonious nurse,
who was terribly particular about clean hands and torn frocks. She
recollected the first tea up there—separate from her father and aunt,
who were dining somewhere down below, an infinite depth of stairs; for
unless she were up in the sky (the child thought), they must be deep
down in the bowels of the earth. At home—before she came to live in
Harley Street—her mother’s dressing-room had been her nursery; and as
they kept early hours in the country parsonage, Margaret had always had
her meals with her father and mother. Oh! well did the tall stately girl
of eighteen remember the tears shed with such wild passion of grief by
the little girl of nine, as she hid her face under the bed-clothes in
that first night; and how she was bidden not to cry by the nurse,
because it would disturb Miss Edith; and how she had cried as bitterly,
but more quietly, till her newly-seen, grand, pretty aunt had come
softly upstairs with Mr. Hale to show him his little sleeping daughter.
Then the little Margaret had hushed her sobs, and tried to lie quiet as
if asleep, for fear of making her father unhappy by her grief, which she
dared not express before her aunt, and which she rather thought it was
wrong to feel at all after the long hoping, and planning, and contriving
they had gone through at home, before her wardrobe could be arranged to
suit her grander circumstances, and before papa could leave his parish
to come up to London, even for a few days.
Now she had got to love the old nursery, though it was but a dismantled
place; and she looked all round with a kind of cat-like regret, at the
idea of leaving it for ever in three days.
“Ah Newton!” said she, “I think we shall all be sorry to leave this dear
old room.”
“Indeed, miss, I shan’t for one. My eyes are not so good as they were,
and the light here is so bad that I can’t see to mend laces except just
at the window, where there’s always a shocking draught—enough to give
one one’s death of cold.”
“Well, I dare say you will have both good light and plenty of warmth at
Naples. You must keep as much of your darning as you can till then.
Thank you, Newton, I can take them down—you’re busy.”
So Margaret went down laden with shawls, and snuffing up their spicy
Eastern smell. Her aunt asked her to stand as a sort of lay figure on
which to display them, as Edith was still asleep. No one thought about
it; but Margaret’s tall, finely made figure, in the black silk dress
which she was wearing as mourning for some distant relative of her
father’s, set off the long beautiful folds of the gorgeous shawls that
would have half-smothered Edith. Margaret stood right under the
chandelier, quite silent and passive, while her aunt adjusted the
draperies. Occasionally, as she was turned round, she caught a glimpse
of herself in the mirror over the chimney-piece, and smiled at her own
appearance there—the familiar features in the usual garb of a princess.
She touched the shawls gently as they hung around her, and took a
pleasure in their soft feel and their brilliant colours, and rather