North and South
upstairs. But Mr. Thornton would not say a word about moving their
quarters; he chafed and chafed, and thought Mr. Bell a most prosy
companion; while Mr. Bell returned the compliment in secret, by
considering Mr. Thornton about as brusque and curt a fellow as he had
ever met with, and terribly gone off both in intelligence and manner. At
last some slight noise in the room above suggested the desirableness of
moving there. They found Margaret with a letter open before her, eagerly
discussing its contents with her father. On the entrance of the
gentlemen, it was immediately put aside; but Mr. Thornton’s eager
senses caught some few words of Mr. Hale’s to Mr. Bell.
“A letter from Henry Lennox. It makes Margaret very hopeful.”
Mr. Bell nodded. Margaret was red as a rose when Mr. Thornton looked at
her. He had the greatest mind in the world to get up and go out of the
room that very instant, and never set foot in the house again.
“We were thinking,” said Mr. Hale, “that you and Mr. Thornton had taken
Margaret’s advice, and were each trying to convert the other, you were
so long in the study.”
“And you thought there would be nothing left of us but an opinion, like
the Kilkenny cat’s tail. Pray whose opinion did you think would have the
most obstinate vitality?”
Mr. Thornton had not a notion what they were talking about, and
disdained to inquire. Mr. Hale politely enlightened him.
“Mr. Thornton, we were accusing Mr. Bell this morning of a kind of
Oxonian mediæval bigotry against his native town; and we—Margaret, I
believe—suggested that it would do him good to associate a little with
Milton manufacturers.”
“I beg your pardon. Margaret thought it would do the Milton
manufacturers good to associate a little more with Oxford men. Now
wasn’t it so, Margaret?”
“I believe I thought it would do both good to see a little more of the
other,—I did not know it was my idea any more than papa’s.”
“And so you see, Mr. Thornton, we ought to have been improving each
other down-stairs, instead of talking over vanished families of Smith’s
and Harrison’s. However, I am willing to do my part now. I wonder when
you Milton men intend to live. All your lives seem to be spent in
gathering together the materials for life.”
“By living, I suppose you mean enjoyment.”
“Yes, enjoyment,—I don’t specify of what, because I trust we should
both consider mere pleasure as very poor enjoyment.”
“I would rather have the nature of the enjoyment defined.”
“Well! enjoyment or leisure—enjoyment of the power and influence which
money gives. You are all striving for money. What do you want it for?”
Mr. Thornton was silent. Then he said, “I really don’t know. But money
is not what _I_ strive for.”
“What then?”
“It is a home question. I shall have to lay myself open to such a
catechist, and I am not sure that I am prepared to do it.”
“No!” said Mr. Hale; “don’t let us be personal in our catechism. You are
neither of you representative men; you are each of you too individual
for that.”
“I am not sure whether to consider that as a compliment or not. I should
like to be the representative of Oxford, with its beauty and its
learning, and its proud old history. What do you say, Margaret; ought I
to be flattered?”
“I don’t know Oxford. But there is a difference between being the
representative of a city and the representative man of its inhabitants.”
“Very true, Miss Margaret. Now I remember, you were against me this
morning, and were quite Miltonian and manufacturing in your
preferences.”
Margaret saw the quick glance of surprise that Mr. Thornton gave her,
and she was annoyed at the construction which he might put on this
speech of Mr. Bell’s. Mr. Bell went on—
“Ah! I wish I could show you our High Street—our Radcliffe Square. I am
leaving out our colleges, just as I give Mr. Thornton leave to omit his
factories in speaking of the charms of Milton. I have a right to abuse
my birth-place. Remember I am a Milton man.”
Mr. Thornton was annoyed more than he ought to have been at all that Mr.
Bell was saying. He was not in a mood for joking. At another time, he
could have enjoyed Mr. Bell’s half testy condemnation of a town where
the life was so at variance with every habit he had formed; but now, he
was galled enough to attempt to defend what was never meant to be
seriously attacked.
“I don’t set up Milton as a model of a town.”
“Not in architecture?” slyly asked Mr. Bell.
“No! We’ve been too busy to attend to mere outward appearances.”
“Don’t say _mere_ outward appearances,” said Mr. Hale, gently. “They
impress us all, from childhood upward—every day of our life.”
“Wait a little while,” said Mr. Thornton. “Remember we are of a
different race from the Greeks, to whom beauty was everything, and to
whom Mr. Bell might speak of a life of leisure and serene enjoyment,
much of which entered in through their outward senses. I don’t mean to
despise them, any more than I would ape them. But I belong to Teutonic
blood; it is little mingled in this part of England to what it is in
others; we retain much of their language; we retain more of their
spirit; we do not look upon life as a time for enjoyment, but as a time
for action and exertion. Our glory and our beauty arise out of our
outward strength, which makes us victorious over material resistance,
and over greater difficulties still. We are Teutonic up here in
Darkshire in another way. We hate to have laws made for us at a
distance. We wish people would allow us to right ourselves, instead of
continually meddling, with their imperfect legislation. We stand up for
self-government, and oppose centralisation.”
“In short, you would like the Heptarchy back again. Well, at any rate, I
revoke what I said this morning—that you Milton people did not
reverence the past. You are regular worshippers of Thor.”
“If we do not reverence the past as you do in Oxford, it is because we
want something which can apply to the present more directly. It is fine
when the study of the past leads to a prophecy of the future. But to men
groping in new circumstances, it would be finer if the words of
experience could direct us how to act in what concerns us most
intimately and immediately; which is full of difficulties to be
encountered; and upon the mode in which they are met and conquered—not
merely pushed aside for the time—depends our future. But no! People can
speak of Utopia much more easily than of the next day’s duty; and yet
when that duty is all done by others, who so ready to cry, ‘Fie, for
shame!’”
“And all this time I don’t see what you are talking about. Would you
Milton men condescend to send up your to-day’s difficulty to Oxford? You
have not tried us yet.”
Mr. Thornton laughed outright at this. “I believe I was talking with
reference to a good deal that has been troubling us of late; I was
thinking of the strikes we have gone through, which are troublesome and
injurious things enough, as I am finding to my cost. And yet this last
strike, under which I am smarting, has been respectable.”
“A respectable strike!” said Mr. Bell. “That sounds as if you were far
gone in the worship of Thor.”
Margaret felt, rather than saw, that Mr. Thornton was chagrined by the
repeated turning into jest of what he was feeling as very serious. She
tried to change the conversation from a subject about which one party
cared little, while, to the other, it was deeply, because personally,
interesting. She forced herself to say something.
“Edith says she finds the printed calicoes in Corfu better and cheaper
than in London.”
“Does she?” said her father, “I think that must be one of Edith’s
exaggerations. Are you sure of it, Margaret?”
“I am sure she says so, papa.”
“Then I am sure of the fact,” said Mr. Bell. “Margaret, I go so far in
my idea of your truthfulness, that it shall cover your cousin’s
character. I don’t believe a cousin of yours could exaggerate.”
“Is Miss Hale so remarkable for truth?” said Mr. Thornton, bitterly. The
moment he had done so, he could have bitten his tongue out. What was he?
And why should he stab her with her shame in this way? How evil he was
to-night: possessed by ill-humour at being detained so long from her;
irritated by the mention of some name, because he thought it belonged to
a more successful lover; now ill-tempered because he had been unable to
cope, with a light heart, against one who was trying, by gay and
careless speeches, to make the evening pass pleasantly away,—the kind
old friend to all parties, whose manner by this time might be well known
to Mr. Thornton, who had been acquainted with him for many years. And
then to speak to Margaret as he had done! She did not get up and leave
the room, as she had done in former days, when his abruptness or his
temper had annoyed her. She sat quite still, after the first momentary
glance of grieved surprise, that made her eyes look like some child’s
who has met with an unexpected rebuff; they slowly dilated into
mournful, reproachful sadness; and then they fell, and she bent over her
work, and did not speak again. But he could not help looking at her, and
he saw a sigh tremble over her body, as if she quivered in some
unwonted chill. He felt as the mother would have done, in the midst of
“her rocking it, and rating it,” had she been called away before her
slow confiding smile, implying perfect trust in mother’s love, had
proved the renewing of its love. He gave short sharp answers; he was
uneasy and cross, unable to discern between jest and earnest; anxious
only for a look, a word of hers, before which to prostrate himself in
penitent humility. But she neither looked nor spoke. Her round taper
fingers flew in and out of her sewing, as steadily and swiftly as if
that were the business of her life. She could not care for him, he
thought, or else the passionate fervour of his wish would have forced
her to raise those eyes, if but for an instant, to read the late
repentance in his. He could have struck her before he left, in order
that by some strange overt act of rudeness, he might earn the privilege
of telling her the remorse that gnawed at his heart. It was well that
the long walk in the open air wound up this evening for him. It sobered
him back into grave resolution that henceforth he would see as little of
her as possible,—since the very sight of that face and form, the very
sounds of that voice (like the soft winds of pure melody) had such power
to move him from his balance. Well! He had known what love was—a sharp
pang, a fierce experience, in the midst of whose flames he was
struggling! but, through the furnace he would fight his way out into the
serenity of middle age,—all the richer and more human for having known
this great passion.
When he had somewhat abruptly left the room, Margaret rose from her
seat, and began silently to fold up her work. The long seams were heavy,
and had an unusual weight for her languid arms. The round lines in her
face took a lengthened, straighter form, and her whole appearance was
that of one who had gone through a day of great fatigue. As the three
prepared for bed, Mr. Bell muttered a little condemnation of Mr.
Thornton.
“I never saw a fellow so spoiled by success. He can’t bear a word; a
jest of any kind. Everything seems to touch on the soreness of his high
dignity. Formerly, he was as simple and noble as the open day; you could
not offend him, because he had no vanity.”
“He is not vain now,” said Margaret, turning round from the table, and
speaking with quiet distinctness. “To-night he has not been like
himself. Something must have annoyed him before he came here.”
Mr. Bell gave her one of his sharp glances from above his spectacles.
She stood it quite calmly; but, after she had left the room, he suddenly
asked,—