Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell

by Elizabeth Gaskell

  Mr. Hale got hold of Higgins’s hand and shook it heartily, without speaking. Higgins looked awkward and ashamed.

  ‘Theer, theer, master! Theer’s ne’er a man, to call a man, amongst us, but what would do th’ same; ay, and better too; for, belie’ me, I’se ne’er got a stroke o’ work, nor yet a sight of any. For all I telled Hamper that, let alone his pledge — which I would not sign — no, I could na, not e’en for this — he’d ne’er ha’ such a worker on his mill as I would be — he’d ha’ none o’ me — no more would none o’ th’ others. I’m a poor black feckless sheep — childer may clem for aught I can do, unless, parson, yo’d help me?’

  ‘Help you! How? I would do anything, — but what can I do?’

  ‘Miss there’ — for Margaret had re-entered the room, and stood silent, listening — ’has often talked grand o’ the South, and the ways down there. Now I dunnot know how far off it is, but I’ve been thinking if I could get ‘em down theer, where food is cheap and wages good, and all the folk, rich and poor, master and man, friendly like; yo’ could, may be, help me to work. I’m not forty-five, and I’ve a deal o’ strength in me, measter.’

  ‘But what kind of work could you do, my man?’

  ‘Well, I reckon I could spade a bit — — ’

  ‘And for that,’ said Margaret, stepping forwards, ‘for anything you could do, Higgins, with the best will in the world, you would, may be, get nine shillings a week; may be ten, at the outside. Food is much the same as here, except that you might have a little garden — — ’

  ‘The childer could work at that,’ said he. ‘I’m sick o’ Milton anyways, and Milton is sick o’ me.’

  ‘You must not go to the South,’ said Margaret, ‘for all that. You could not stand it. You would have to be out all weathers. It would kill you with rheumatism. The mere bodily work at your time of life would break you down. The fare is far different to what you have been accustomed to.’

  ‘I’se nought particular about my meat,’ said he, as if offended.

  ‘But you’ve reckoned on having butcher’s meat once a day, if you’re in work; pay for that out of your ten shillings, and keep those poor children if you can. I owe it to you — since it’s my way of talking that has set you off on this idea — to put it all clear before you. You would not bear the dulness of the life; you don’t know what it is; it would eat you away like rust. Those that have lived there all their lives, are used to soaking in the stagnant waters. They labour on, from day to day, in the great solitude of steaming fields — never speaking or lifting up their poor, bent, downcast heads. The hard spade-work robs their brain of life; the sameness of their toil deadens their imagination; they don’t care to meet to talk over thoughts and speculations, even of the weakest, wildest kind, after their work is done; they go home brutishly tired, poor creatures! caring for nothing but food and rest. You could not stir them up into any companionship, which you get in a town as plentiful as the air you breathe, whether it be good or bad — and that I don’t know; but I do know, that you of all men are not one to bear a life among such labourers. What would be peace to them would be eternal fretting to you. Think no more of it, Nicholas, I beg. Besides, you could never pay to get mother and children all there — that’s one good thing.’

  ‘I’ve reckoned for that. One house mun do for us a’, and the furniture o’ t’other would go a good way. And men theer mun have their families to keep — mappen six or seven childer. God help ‘em!’ said he, more convinced by his own presentation of the facts than by all Margaret had said, and suddenly renouncing the idea, which had but recently formed itself in a brain worn out by the day’s fatigue and anxiety. ‘God help ‘em! North an’ South have each getten their own troubles. If work’s sure and steady theer, labour’s paid at starvation prices; while here we’n rucks o’ money coming in one quarter, and ne’er a farthing th’ next. For sure, th’ world is in a confusion that passes me or any other man to understand; it needs fettling, and who’s to fettle it, if it’s as yon folks say, and there’s nought but what we see?’

  Mr. Hale was busy cutting bread and butter; Margaret was glad of this, for she saw that Higgins was better left to himself: that if her father began to speak ever so mildly on the subject of Higgins’s thoughts, the latter would consider himself challenged to an argument, and would feel himself bound to maintain his own ground. She and her father kept up an indifferent conversation until Higgins, scarcely aware whether he ate or not, had made a very substantial meal. Then he pushed his chair away from the table, and tried to take an interest in what they were saying; but it was of no use; and he fell back into dreamy gloom. Suddenly, Margaret said (she had been thinking of it for some time, but the words had stuck in her throat), ‘Higgins, have you been to Marlborough Mills to seek for work?’

  ‘Thornton’s?’ asked he. ‘Ay, I’ve been at Thornton’s.’

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘Such a chap as me is not like to see the measter. Th’ o’erlooker bid me go and be d — — d.’

  ‘I wish you had seen Mr. Thornton,’ said Mr. Hale. ‘He might not have given you work, but he would not have used such language.’

  ‘As to th’ language, I’m welly used to it; it dunnot matter to me. I’m not nesh mysel’ when I’m put out. It were th’ fact that I were na wanted theer, no more nor ony other place, as I minded.’

  ‘But I wish you had seen Mr. Thornton,’ repeated Margaret. ‘Would you go again — it’s a good deal to ask, I know — but would you go to-morrow and try him? I should be so glad if you would.’

  ‘I’m afraid it would be of no use,’ said Mr. Hale, in a low voice. ‘It would be better to let me speak to him.’ Margaret still looked at Higgins for his answer. Those grave soft eyes of hers were difficult to resist. He gave a great sigh.

  ‘It would tax my pride above a bit; if it were for mysel’, I could stand a deal o’ clemming first; I’d sooner knock him down than ask a favour from him. I’d a deal sooner be flogged mysel’; but yo’re not a common wench, axing yo’r pardon, nor yet have yo’ common ways about yo’. I’ll e’en make a wry face, and go at it to-morrow. Dunna yo’ think that he’ll do it. That man has it in him to be burnt at the stake afore he’ll give in. I do it for yo’r sake, Miss Hale, and it’s first time in my life as e’er I give way to a woman. Neither my wife nor Bess could e’er say that much again me.’

  ‘All the more do I thank you,’ said Margaret, smiling. ‘Though I don’t believe you: I believe you have just given way to wife and daughter as much as most men.’

  ‘And as to Mr. Thornton,’ said Mr. Hale, ‘I’ll give you a note to him, which, I think I may venture to say, will ensure you a hearing.’

  ‘I thank yo’ kindly, sir, but I’d as lief stand on my own bottom. I dunnot stomach the notion of having favour curried for me, by one as doesn’t know the ins and outs of the quarrel. Meddling ‘twixt master and man is liker meddling ‘twixt husband and wife than aught else: it takes a deal o’ wisdom for to do ony good. I’ll stand guard at the lodge door. I’ll stand there fro’ six in the morning till I get speech on him. But I’d liefer sweep th’ streets, if paupers had na’ got hold on that work. Dunna yo’ hope, miss. There’ll be more chance o’ getting milk out of a flint. I wish yo’ a very good night, and many thanks to yo’.’

  ‘You’ll find your shoe’s by the kitchen fire; I took them there to dry,’ said Margaret.

  He turned round and looked at her steadily, and then he brushed his lean hand across his eyes and went his way.

  ‘How proud that man is!’ said her father, who was a little annoyed at the manner in which Higgins had declined his intercession with Mr. Thornton.

  ‘He is,’ said Margaret; ‘but what grand makings of a man there are in him, pride and all.’

  ‘It’s amusing to see how he evidently respects the part in Mr.

  Thornton’s character which is like his own.’

  ‘There’s granite in all these northern people, papa, is there not?’


  ‘There was none in poor Boucher, I am afraid; none in his wife either.’

  ‘I should guess from their tones that they had Irish blood in them. I wonder what success he’ll have to-morrow. If he and Mr. Thornton would speak out together as man to man — if Higgins would forget that Mr. Thornton was a master, and speak to him as he does to us — and if Mr. Thornton would be patient enough to listen to him with his human heart, not with his master’s ears — ’

  ‘You are getting to do Mr. Thornton justice at last, Margaret,’ said her father, pinching her ear.

  Margaret had a strange choking at her heart, which made her unable to answer. ‘Oh!’ thought she, ‘I wish I were a man, that I could go and force him to express his disapprobation, and tell him honestly that I knew I deserved it. It seems hard to lose him as a friend just when I had begun to feel his value. How tender he was with dear mamma! If it were only for her sake, I wish he would come, and then at least I should know how much I was abased in his eyes.’

  CHAPTER XXXVIII

  PROMISES FULFILLED

  ‘Then proudly, proudly up she rose,

  Tho’ the tear was in her e’e,

  “Whate’er ye say, think what ye may,

  Ye’s get na word frae me!”‘

  SCOTCH BALLAD.

  It was not merely that Margaret was known to Mr. Thornton to have spoken falsely, — though she imagined that for this reason only was she so turned in his opinion, — but that this falsehood of hers bore a distinct reference in his mind to some other lover. He could not forget the fond and earnest look that had passed between her and some other man — the attitude of familiar confidence, if not of positive endearment. The thought of this perpetually stung him; it was a picture before his eyes, wherever he went and whatever he was doing. In addition to this (and he ground his teeth as he remembered it), was the hour, dusky twilight; the place, so far away from home, and comparatively unfrequented. His nobler self had said at first, that all this last might be accidental, innocent, justifiable; but once allow her right to love and be beloved (and had he any reason to deny her right? — had not her words been severely explicit when she cast his love away from her?), she might easily have been beguiled into a longer walk, on to a later hour than she had anticipated. But that falsehood! which showed a fatal consciousness of something wrong, and to be concealed, which was unlike her. He did her that justice, though all the time it would have been a relief to believe her utterly unworthy of his esteem. It was this that made the misery — that he passionately loved her, and thought her, even with all her faults, more lovely and more excellent than any other woman; yet he deemed her so attached to some other man, so led away by her affection for him as to violate her truthful nature. The very falsehood that stained her, was a proof how blindly she loved another — this dark, slight, elegant, handsome man — while he himself was rough, and stern, and strongly made. He lashed himself into an agony of fierce jealousy. He thought of that look, that attitude! — how he would have laid his life at her feet for such tender glances, such fond detention! He mocked at himself, for having valued the mechanical way in which she had protected him from the fury of the mob; now he had seen how soft and bewitching she looked when with a man she really loved. He remembered, point by point, the sharpness of her words — ’There was not a man in all that crowd for whom she would not have done as much, far more readily than for him.’ He shared with the mob, in her desire of averting bloodshed from them; but this man, this hidden lover, shared with nobody; he had looks, words, hand-cleavings, lies, concealment, all to himself.

  Mr. Thornton was conscious that he had never been so irritable as he was now, in all his life long; he felt inclined to give a short abrupt answer, more like a bark than a speech, to every one that asked him a question; and this consciousness hurt his pride he had always piqued himself on his self-control, and control himself he would. So the manner was subdued to a quiet deliberation, but the matter was even harder and sterner than common. He was more than usually silent at home; employing his evenings in a continual pace backwards and forwards, which would have annoyed his mother exceedingly if it had been practised by any one else; and did not tend to promote any forbearance on her part even to this beloved son.

  ‘Can you stop — can you sit down for a moment? I have something to say to you, if you would give up that everlasting walk, walk, walk.’

  He sat down instantly, on a chair against the wall.

  ‘I want to speak to you about Betsy. She says she must leave us; that her lover’s death has so affected her spirits she can’t give her heart to her work.’

  ‘Very well. I suppose other cooks are to be met with.’

  ‘That’s so like a man. It’s not merely the cooking, it is that she knows all the ways of the house. Besides, she tells me something about your friend Miss Hale.’

  ‘Miss Hale is no friend of mine. Mr. Hale is my friend.’

  ‘I am glad to hear you say so, for if she had been your friend, what Betsy says would have annoyed you.’

  ‘Let me hear it,’ said he, with the extreme quietness of manner he had been assuming for the last few days.

  ‘Betsy says, that the night on which her lover — I forget his name — for she always calls him “he” — — ’

  ‘Leonards.’

  ‘The night on which Leonards was last seen at the station — when he was last seen on duty, in fact — Miss Hale was there, walking about with a young man who, Betsy believes, killed Leonards by some blow or push.’

  ‘Leonards was not killed by any blow or push.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because I distinctly put the question to the surgeon of the Infirmary. He told me there was an internal disease of long standing, caused by Leonards’ habit of drinking to excess; that the fact of his becoming rapidly worse while in a state of intoxication, settled the question as to whether the last fatal attack was caused by excess of drinking, or the fall.’

  ‘The fall! What fall?’

  ‘Caused by the blow or push of which Betsy speaks.’

  ‘Then there was a blow or push?’

  ‘I believe so.’

  ‘And who did it?’

  ‘As there was no inquest, in consequence of the doctor’s opinion,

  I cannot tell you.’

  ‘But Miss Hale was there?’

  No answer.

  ‘And with a young man?’

  Still no answer. At last he said: ‘I tell you, mother, that there was no inquest — no inquiry. No judicial inquiry, I mean.’

  ‘Betsy says that Woolmer (some man she knows, who is in a grocer’s shop out at Crampton) can swear that Miss Hale was at the station at that hour, walking backwards and forwards with a young man.’

  ‘I don’t see what we have to do with that. Miss Hale is at liberty to please herself.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear you say so,’ said Mrs. Thornton, eagerly. ‘It certainly signifies very little to us — not at all to you, after what has passed! but I — I made a promise to Mrs. Hale, that I would not allow her daughter to go wrong without advising and remonstrating with her. I shall certainly let her know my opinion of such conduct.’

  ‘I do not see any harm in what she did that evening,’ said Mr. Thornton, getting up, and coming near to his mother; he stood by the chimney-piece with his face turned away from the room.

  ‘You would not have approved of Fanny’s being seen out, after dark, in rather a lonely place, walking about with a young man. I say nothing of the taste which could choose the time, when her mother lay unburied, for such a promenade. Should you have liked your sister to have been noticed by a grocer’s assistant for doing so?’

  ‘In the first place, as it is not many years since I myself was a draper’s assistant, the mere circumstance of a grocer’s assistant noticing any act does not alter the character of the act to me. And in the next place, I see a great deal of difference between Miss Hale and Fanny. I can imagine that the one may have weighty reasons,
which may and ought to make her overlook any seeming Impropriety in her conduct. I never knew Fanny have weighty reasons for anything. Other people must guard her. I believe Miss Hale is a guardian to herself.’

  ‘A pretty character of your sister, indeed! Really, John, one would have thought Miss Hale had done enough to make you clear-sighted. She drew you on to an offer, by a bold display of pretended regard for you, — to play you off against this very young man, I’ve no doubt. Her whole conduct is clear to me now. You believe he is her lover, I suppose — you agree to that.’

  He turned round to his mother; his face was very gray and grim. ‘Yes, mother. I do believe he is her lover.’ When he had spoken, he turned round again; he writhed himself about, like one in bodily pain. He leant his face against his hand. Then before she could speak, he turned sharp again:

  ‘Mother. He is her lover, whoever he is; but she may need help and womanly counsel; — there may be difficulties or temptations which I don’t know. I fear there are. I don’t want to know what they are; but as you have ever been a good — ay! and a tender mother to me, go to her, and gain her confidence, and tell her what is best to be done. I know that something is wrong; some dread, must be a terrible torture to her.’

  ‘For God’s sake, John!’ said his mother, now really shocked, ‘what do you mean? What do you mean? What do you know?’

  He did not reply to her.

  ‘John! I don’t know what I shan’t think unless you speak. You have no right to say what you have done against her.’

  ‘Not against her, mother! I could not speak against her.’

  ‘Well! you have no right to say what you have done, unless you say more. These half-expressions are what ruin a woman’s character.’

  ‘Her character! Mother, you do not dare — ’ he faced about, and looked into her face with his flaming eyes. Then, drawing himself up into determined composure and dignity, he said, ‘I will not say any more than this, which is neither more nor less than the simple truth, and I am sure you believe me, — I have good reason to believe, that Miss Hale is in some strait and difficulty connected with an attachment which, of itself, from my knowledge of Miss Hale’s character, is perfectly innocent and right. What my reason is, I refuse to tell. But never let me hear any one say a word against her, implying any more serious imputation than that she now needs the counsel of some kind and gentle woman. You promised Mrs. Hale to be that woman!’