North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell (classic literature books .txt) 📖

‘Were yo’ with her? Did yo’ see her die?’

‘No!’ replied Margaret, standing still with the utmost patience, now she found herself perceived. It was some time before he spoke again, but he kept his hold on her arm.

‘All men must die,’ said he at last, with a strange sort of gravity, which first suggested to Margaret the idea that he had been drinking—not enough to intoxicate himself, but enough to make his thoughts bewildered. ‘But she were younger than me.’ Still he pondered over the event, not looking at Margaret, though he grasped her tight. 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’s 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 tired. 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 dunder-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 again 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.

‘Goodbye, 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 way 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 among 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 as 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, and 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 could 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