North and South
“Is Mrs.—is her aunt come?” asked Mr. Thornton.
“Come? Yes! maid and all. One would have thought she might have come by
herself at such a time! And now I shall have to turn out and find my way
to the Clarendon.”
“You must not go to the Clarendon. We have five or six empty bed-rooms
at home.”
“Well aired?”
“I think you may trust my mother for that.”
“Then I’ll only run upstairs and wish that wan girl good-night, and make
my bow to her aunt, and go off with you straight.”
Mr. Bell was some time upstairs. Mr. Thornton began to think it long,
for he was full of business, and had hardly been able to spare the time
for running up to Crampton, and enquiring how Miss Hale was.
When they had set out upon their walk, Mr. Bell said:
“I was kept by those women in the drawing-room. Mrs. Shaw is anxious to
get home—on account of her daughter, she says—and wants Margaret to go
off with her at once. Now she is no more fit for travelling than I am
for flying. Besides, she says, and very justly, that she has friends she
must see—that she must wish good-bye to several people; and then her
aunt worried her about old claims, and was she forgetful of old friends?
And she said, with a great burst of crying, she should be glad enough to
go from a place where she had suffered so much. Now I must return to
Oxford to-morrow, and I don’t know on which side of the scale to throw
in my voice.”
He paused, as if asking a question; but he received no answer from his
companion, the echo of whose thoughts kept repeating—
“Where she had suffered so much.” Alas! and that was the way in which
this eighteen months in Milton—to him so unspeakably precious, down to
its very bitterness, which was worth all the rest of life’s
sweetness—would be remembered. Neither loss of father, nor loss of
mother, dear as she was to Mr. Thornton, could have poisoned the
remembrance of the weeks, the days, the hours, when a walk of two miles,
every step of which was pleasant, as it brought him nearer and nearer to
her, took him to her sweet presence—every step of which was rich, as
each recurring moment that bore him away from her made him recall some
fresh grace in her demeanour, or pleasant pungency in her character.
Yes! whatever had happened to him, external to his relation to her, he
could never have spoken of that time, when he could have seen her every
day—when he had her within his grasp, as it were—as a time of
suffering. It had been a royal time of luxury to him, with all its
stings and contumelies, compared to the poverty that crept round and
clipped the anticipation of the future down to sordid fact, and life
without an atmosphere of either hope or fear.
Mrs. Thornton and Fanny were in the dining-room; the latter in a flutter
of small exultation, as the maid held up one glossy material after
another, to try the effect of the wedding-dresses by candle-light. Her
mother really tried to sympathise with her, but could not. Neither taste
nor dress were in her line of subjects, and she heartily wished that
Fanny had accepted her brother’s offer of having the wedding clothes
provided by some first-rate London dressmaker, without the endless
troublesome discussions, and unsettled waverings, that arose out of
Fanny’s desire to choose and superintend everything herself. Mr.
Thornton was only too glad to mark his grateful approbation of any
sensible man, who could be captivated by Fanny’s second-rate airs and
graces, by giving her ample means for providing herself with the finery,
which certainly rivalled, if it did not exceed, the lover in her
estimation. When her brother and Mr. Bell came in, Fanny blushed and
simpered, and fluttered over the signs of her employment, in a way which
could not have failed to draw attention from any one else but Mr. Bell.
If he thought about her and her silks and satins at all, it was to
compare her and them with the pale sorrow he had left behind him,
sitting motionless, with bent head and folded hands, in a room where the
stillness was so great that you might almost fancy the rush in your
straining ears was occasioned by the spirits of the dead, yet hovering
round their beloved. For when Mr. Bell had first gone upstairs, Mrs.
Shaw lay asleep on the sofa; and no sound broke the silence.
Mrs. Thornton gave Mr. Bell her formal, hospitable welcome. She was
never so gracious as when receiving her son’s friends in her son’s
house; and the more unexpected they were, the more honour to her
admirable housekeeping preparations for comfort.
“How is Miss Hale?” she asked.
“About as broken down by this last stroke as she can be.”
“I am sure it is very well for her that she has such a friend as you.”
“I wish I were her only friend, madam. I daresay it sounds very brutal;
but here have I been displaced, and turned out of my post of comforter
and adviser by a fine lady aunt; and there are cousins and what not
claiming her in London, as if she were a lap-dog belonging to them. And
she is too weak and miserable to have a will of her own.”
“She must indeed be weak,” said Mrs. Thornton, with an implied meaning
which her son understood well. “But where,” continued Mrs. Thornton,
“have these relations been all this time that Miss Hale has appeared
almost friendless, and has certainly had a good deal of anxiety to
bear?” But she did not feel interest enough in the answer to her
question to wait for it. She left the room to make her household
arrangements.
“They have been living abroad. They have some kind of claim upon her. I
will do them that justice. The aunt brought her up, and she and the
cousin have been like sisters. The thing vexing me, you see, is that I
wanted to take her for a child of my own; and I am jealous of these
people, who don’t seem to value the privilege of their right. Now it
would be different if Frederick claimed her.”
“Frederick!” exclaimed Mr. Thornton. “Who is he? What right——?” He
stopped short in his vehement question.
“Frederick,” said Mr. Bell in surprise. “Why, don’t you know? He’s her
brother. Have you not heard——”
“I never heard his name before. Where is he? Who is he?”
“Surely I told you about him, when the family first came to Milton—the
son who was concerned in that mutiny.”
“I never heard of him till this moment. Where does he live?”
“In Spain. He’s liable to be arrested the moment he sets foot on English
ground. Poor fellow! he will grieve at not being able to attend his
father’s funeral. We must be content with Captain Lennox; for I don’t
know of any other relation.”
“I hope I may be allowed to go?”
“Certainly; thankfully. You’re a good fellow, after all, Thornton. Hale
liked you. He spoke to me, only the other day, at Oxford. He regretted
he had seen so little of you lately. I am obliged to you for wishing to
show him respect.”
“But about Frederick. Does he never come to England?”
“Never.”
“He was not over here about the time of Mrs. Hale’s death?”
“No. Why, I was here then. I hadn’t seen Hale for years and years: and,
if you remember, I came—No, it was some time after that that I came.
But poor Frederick Hale was not here then. What made you think he was?”
“I saw a young man walking with Miss Hale one day,” replied Mr.
Thornton, “and I think it was about that time.”
“Oh, that would be this young Lennox, the Captain’s brother. He’s a
lawyer, and they were in pretty constant correspondence with him; and I
remember Mr. Hale told me he thought he would come down. Do you know,”
said Mr. Bell, wheeling round, and shutting one eye, the better to bring
the forces of the other to bear with keen scrutiny on Mr. Thornton’s
face, “that I once fancied you had a little tenderness for Margaret?”
No answer. No change of countenance.
“And so did poor Hale. Not at first, and not till I had put it into his
head.”
“I admired Miss Hale. Every one must do so. She is a beautiful
creature,” said Mr. Thornton, driven to bay by Mr. Bell’s pertinacious
questioning.
“Is that all! You can speak of her in that measured way, as simply a
‘beautiful creature’—only something to catch the eye. I did hope you
had had nobleness enough in you to make you pay her the homage of the
heart. Though I believe—in fact I know, she would have rejected you,
still to have loved her without return would have lifted you higher than
all those, be they who they may, that have ever known her to love.
‘Beautiful creature’ indeed! Do you speak of her as you would of a horse
or a dog?”
Mr. Thornton’s eyes glowed like red embers.
“Mr. Bell,” said he, “before you speak so, you should remember that all
men are not as free to express what they feel as you are. Let us talk of
something else.” For though his heart leaped up, as at a trumpet-call,
to every word that Mr. Bell had said, and though he knew that what he
had said would henceforward bind the thought of the old Oxford Fellow
closely up with the most precious things of his heart, yet he would not
be forced into any expression of what he felt towards Margaret. He was
no mocking-bird of praise to try, because another extolled what he
reverenced and passionately loved, to outdo him in laudation. So he
turned to some of the dry matters of business that lay between Mr. Bell
and him, as landlord and tenant.
“What is that heap of brick and mortar we came against in the yard? Any
repairs wanted?”
“No, none, thank you.”
“Are you building on your own account? If you are, I’m very much obliged
to you.”
“I’m building a dining-room—for the men I mean—the hands.”
“I thought you were hard to please, if this room wasn’t good enough to
satisfy you, a bachelor.”
“I’ve got acquainted with a strange kind of chap, and I put one or two
children in whom he is interested to school. So, as I happened to be
passing near his house one day, I just went there about some trifling
payment to be made; and I saw such a miserable black frizzle of a
dinner—a greasy cinder of meat, as first set me a-thinking. But it was
not till provisions grew so high this winter that I bethought me how, by
buying things wholesale, and cooking a good quantity of provisions
together, much money might be saved, and much comfort gained. So I spoke
to my friend—or my enemy—the man I told you of—and he found fault
with every detail of my plan; and in consequence I laid it aside, both
as impracticable, and also because if I forced it into operation I
should be interfering with the independence of my men; when, suddenly,
this Higgins came to me and graciously signified his approval of a
scheme so nearly the same as mine, that I might fairly have claimed it;
and, moreover, the approval of several of his fellow-workmen, to whom he
had spoken. I was a little ‘riled,’ I confess, by his manner, and
thought of throwing the whole thing overboard to sink or swim. But it
seemed childish to relinquish a plan which I had once thought wise and
well-laid, just because I myself did not receive all the honour and
consequence due to the originator. So I coolly took the part assigned to
me, which is something like that of a steward to a club. I buy in the
provisions wholesale, and provide a fitting matron or cook.”
“I hope you give satisfaction in your new capacity. Are you a good judge
of potatoes and onions? But I suppose Mrs. Thornton assists you in your
marketing.”
“Not a bit,” replied Mr. Thornton. “She disapproves of the whole plan,
and now we never mention it to each other. But I manage pretty well,
getting in great stocks from Liverpool, and being served in butcher’s
meat by our own family butcher. I can assure you, the hot dinners the
matron turns out are not to be despised.”
“Do you taste each dish as it goes in, in virtue of your office? I hope
you have a white wand.”
“I was very scrupulous, at first, in confining myself to the mere