North and South
Suddenly, he looked up at her with a wild searching inquiry in his
glance. “Yo’re sure and certain she’s dead—not in a dwam, a faint?
she’s been so before, often.”
“She is dead,” replied Margaret. She felt no fear in speaking to him,
though he hurt her arm with his gripe, and wild gleams came across the
stupidity of his eyes.
“She is dead!” she said.
He looked at her still with that searching look, which seemed to fade
out of his eyes as he gazed. Then he suddenly let go his hold of
Margaret, and, throwing his body half across the table, he shook it and
every piece of furniture in the room, with his violent sobs. Mary came
trembling towards him.
“Get thee gone!—get thee gone!” he cried, striking wildly and blindly
at her. “What do I care for thee?” Margaret took her hand and held it
softly in hers. He tore his hair, he beat his head against the hard
wood, then he lay exhausted and stupid. Still his daughter and Margaret
did not move. Mary trembled from head to foot.
At last—it might have been a quarter of an hour, it might have been an
hour—he lifted himself up. His eyes were swollen and bloodshot, and he
seemed to have forgotten that any one was by; he scowled at the watchers
when he saw them. He shook himself heavily, gave them one more sullen
look, spoke never a word, but made for the door.
“Oh, father, father!” said Mary, throwing herself upon his arm,—“not
to-night! Any night but to-night. Oh, help me! he’s going out to drink
again! Father, I’ll not leave yo’. Yo’ may strike, but I’ll not leave
yo’. She told me last of all to keep yo’ fro’ drink!”
But Margaret stood in the doorway, silent yet commanding. He looked up
at her defyingly.
“It’s my own house. Stand out o’ the way, wench, or I’ll make yo’!” He
had shaken off Mary with violence; he looked ready to strike Margaret.
But she never moved a feature—never took her deep, serious eyes off
him. He stared back on her with gloomy fierceness. If she had stirred
hand or foot, he would have thrust her aside with even more violence
than he had used to his own daughter, whose face was bleeding from her
fall against a chair.
“What are yo’ looking at me in that way for?” asked he at last, daunted
and awed by her severe calm. “If yo’ think for to keep me from going
what gait I choose, because she loved yo’—and in my own house, too,
where I never asked yo’ to come, yo’re mista’en. It’s very hard upon a
man that he can’t go to the only comfort left.”
Margaret felt that he acknowledged her power. What could she do next? He
had seated himself on a chair, close to the door; half-conquered
half-resenting; intending to go out as soon as she left her position,
but unwilling to use the violence he had threatened not five minutes
before. Margaret laid her hand on his arm.
“Come with me,” she said. “Come and see her!”
The voice in which she spoke was very low and solemn; but there was no
fear or doubt expressed in it, either of him or of his compliance. He
sullenly rose up. He stood uncertain, with dogged irresolution upon his
face. She waited him there; quietly and patiently waited for his time to
move. He had a strange pleasure in making her wait; but at last he moved
towards the stairs.
She and he stood by the corpse.
“Her last words to Mary were, ‘Keep my father fro’ drink.’”
“It canna hurt her now,” muttered he. “Nought can hurt her now.” Then,
raising his voice to a wailing cry, he went on: “We may quarrel and fall
out—we may make peace and be friends—we may clem to skin and bone—and
nought o’ all our griefs will ever touch her more. Hoo’s had her portion
on ’em. What wi’ hard work first, and sickness at last, hoo’ led the
life of a dog. And to die without knowing one good piece o’ rejoicing in
all her days! Nay, wench, whatever hoo said, hoo can know nought about
it now, and I mun ha’ a sup o’ drink just to steady me again sorrow.”
“No,” said Margaret, softening with his softened manner. “You shall not.
If her life has been what you say, at any rate she did not fear death as
some do. Oh, you should have heard her speak of the life to come—the
life hidden with God, that she is now gone to.”
He shook his head, glancing sideways up at Margaret as he did so. His
pale haggard face struck her painfully.
“You are sorely tried. Where have you been all day—not at work?”
“Not at work, sure enough,” said he, with a short, grim laugh. “Not at
what you call work. I were at the Committee, till I were sickened out
wi’ trying to make fools hear reason. I were fetched to Boucher’s wife
afore seven this morning. She’s bed-fast, but she were raving and raging
to know where her dunner-headed brute of a chap was, as if I’d to keep
him—as if he were fit to be ruled by me. The d—d fool, who has put his
foot in all our plans! And I’ve walked my feet sore wi’ going about for
to see men who wouldn’t be seen, now the law is raised against us. And I
were sore-hearted, too, which is worse than sore-footed; and if I did
see a friend who ossed to treat me, I never knew hoo lay a-dying here.
Bess, lass, thou’d believe me, thou wouldst—wouldstn’t thou?” turning
to the poor dumb form with wild appeal.
“I am sure,” said Margaret, “I am sure you did not know; it was quite
sudden. But, now, you see, it would be different; you do know; you do
see her lying there; you hear what she said with her last breath. You
will not go?”
No answer. In fact, where was he to look for comfort?
“Come home with me,” said she at last, with a bold venture, half
trembling at her own proposal as she made it. “At least you shall have
some comfortable food, which I’m sure you need.”
“Yo’r father’s a parson?” asked he, with a sudden turn in his ideas.
“He was,” said Margaret, shortly.
“I’ll go and take a dish o’ tea with him, since yo’ve asked me. I’ve
many a thing I often wished to say to a parson, and I’m not particular
as to whether he’s preaching now, or not.”
Margaret was perplexed; his drinking tea with her father, who would be
totally unprepared for his visitor—her mother so ill—seemed utterly
out of the question; and yet, if she drew back now, it would be worse
than ever—sure to drive him to the gin-shop. She thought that if she
could only get him to their own house, it was so great a step gained
that she would trust to the chapter of accidents for the next.
“Good-bye, ou’d wench! We’ve parted company at last, we have! But
thou’st been a blessin’ to thy father ever sin’ thou wert born. Bless
thy white lips, lass,—they’ve a smile on ’em now! and I’m glad to see
it once again, though I’m lone and forlorn for evermore.”
He stooped down and fondly kissed his daughter; covered up her face, and
turned to follow Margaret. She had hastily gone down stairs to tell
Mary of the arrangement; to say it was the only place she could think of
to keep him from the gin-palace; to urge Mary to come too, for her heart
smote her at the idea of leaving the poor affectionate girl alone. But
Mary had friends amongst the neighbours, she said, who would come in and
sit a bit with her; it was all right; but father—
He was there by them or she would have spoken more. He had shaken off
his emotion, as if he was ashamed of having ever given way to it; and
had even o’erleaped himself so much that he assumed a sort of bitter
mirth, like the crackling of thorns under a pot.
“I’m going to take my tea wi’ her father, I am.”
But he slouched his cap low down over his brow as he went out into the
street, and looked neither to the right nor to the left, while he
tramped along by Margaret’s side; he feared being upset by the words,
still more the looks, of sympathising neighbours. So he and Margaret
walked in silence.
As he got near the street in which he knew she lived, he looked down at
his clothes, his hands, his shoes.
“I should m’appen ha’ cleaned mysel’, first.”
It certainly would have been desirable, but Margaret assured him he
should be allowed to go into the yard, and have soap and towel provided;
she would not let him slip out of her hands just then.
While he followed the house-servant along the passage, and through the
kitchen, stepping cautiously on every dark mark in the pattern of the
oil-cloth, in order to conceal his dirty foot-prints, Margaret ran
upstairs. She met Dixon on the landing.
“How is mamma?—where is papa?”
Missus was tired, and gone into her own room. She had wanted to go to
bed, but Dixon had persuaded her to lie down on the sofa, and have her
tea brought to her there; it would be better than getting restless by
being too long in bed.
So far, so good. But where was Mr. Hale? In the drawing-room. Margaret
went in half breathless with the hurried story she had to tell. Of
course, she told it incompletely; and her father was rather “taken
aback” by the idea of the drunken weaver awaiting him in his quiet
study, with whom he was expected to drink tea, and on whose behalf
Margaret was anxiously pleading. The meek, kind-hearted Mr. Hale would
have readily tried to console him in his grief, but, unluckily, the
point Margaret dwelt upon most forcibly was the fact of his having been
drinking, and her having brought him home with her as a last expedient
to keep him from the gin-shop. One little event had come out of another
so naturally that Margaret was hardly conscious of what she had done,
till she saw the slight look of repugnance on her father’s face.
“Oh, papa! he really is a man you will not dislike—if you won’t be
shocked to begin with.”
“But, Margaret, to bring a drunken man home—and your mother so ill!”
Margaret’s countenance fell. “I am sorry, papa. He is very quiet—he is
not tipsy at all. He was only rather strange at first, but that might
be the shock of poor Bessy’s death.” Margaret’s eyes filled with tears.
Mr. Hale took hold of her sweet pleading face in both his hands, and
kissed her forehead.
“It is all right, dear. I’ll go and make him as comfortable as I can,
and do you attend to your mother. Only, if you can come in and make a
third in the study, I shall be glad.”
“Oh, yes—thank you.” But as Mr. Hale was leaving the room, she ran
after him.
“Papa—you must not wonder at what he says: he’s an——, I mean he does
not believe much in what we do.”
“Oh dear! a drunken infidel weaver!” said Mr. Hale to himself, in
dismay. But to Margaret he only said, “If your mother goes to sleep, be
sure you come directly.”
Margaret went into her mother’s room. Mrs. Hale lifted herself up from a
doze.
“When did you write to Frederick, Margaret? Yesterday, or the day
before?”
“Yesterday, mamma.”
“Yesterday, and the letter went?”
“Yes. I took it myself.”
“Oh, Margaret, I’m so afraid of his coming! If he should be recognized!
If he should be taken! If he should be executed, after all these years
that he has kept away and lived in safety! I keep falling asleep and
dreaming that he is caught and being tried.”
“Oh, mamma, don’t be afraid. There will be some risk, no doubt; but we
will lessen it as much as ever we can. And it is so little! Now, if we
were at Helstone, there would be twenty—a hundred times as much. There,
everybody would remember him; and if there was a stranger known to be in
the house, they would be sure to guess it was Frederick; while here,
nobody knows or cares for us enough to notice what we do. Dixon will
keep the door like a dragon—won’t you, Dixon—while he is here?”
“They’ll be clever if they come in past me!” said Dixon, showing her
teeth at the bare idea.
“And he need not go out, except in the dusk, poor fellow!”
“Poor fellow!” echoed Mrs. Hale. “But I almost wish you had not written.
Would it be too late to stop him if you wrote again, Margaret?”
“I’m afraid it would, mamma,” said Margaret, remembering the urgency
with which she had entreated him to come directly, if he wished to see