North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell (book recommendations for young adults txt) 📕

‘Do you know, Margaret, I was very nearly giving both Dixon and myself a good fright this afternoon. I was in my bedroom; I had heard a ring at the front door, but I thought the ringer must have done his business and gone away long ago; so I was on the point of making my appearance in the passage, when, as I opened my room door, I saw Dixon coming downstairs; and she frowned and kicked me into hiding again. I kept the door open, and heard a message given to some man that was in my father’s study, and that then went away. Who could it have been? Some of the shopmen?’

‘Very likely,’ said Margaret, indifferently. ‘There was a little quiet man who came up for orders about two o’clock.’

‘But this was not a little man—a great powerful fellow; and it was past four when he was here.’

‘It was Mr. Thornton,’ said Mr. Hale. They were glad to have drawn him into the conversation.

‘Mr. Thornton!’ said Margaret, a little surprised. ‘I thought–-‘

‘Well, little one, what did you think?’ asked Frederick, as she did not finish her sentence.

‘Oh, only,’ said she, reddening and looking straight at him, ‘I fancied you meant some one of a different class, not a gentleman; somebody come on an errand.’

‘He looked like some one of that kind,’ said Frederick, carelessly. ‘I took him for a shopman, and he turns out a manufacturer.’

Margaret was silent. She remembered how at first, before she knew his character, she had spoken and thought of him just as Frederick was doing. It was but a natural impression that was made upon him, and yet she was a little annoyed by it. She was unwilling to speak; she wanted to make Frederick understand what kind of person Mr. Thornton was—but she was tongue-tied.

Mr. Hale went on. ‘He came to offer any assistance in his power, I believe. But I could not see him. I told Dixon to ask him if he would like to see you—I think I asked her to find you, and you would go to him. I don’t know what I said.’

‘He has been a very agreeable acquaintance, has he not?’ asked Frederick, throwing the question like a ball for any one to catch who chose.

‘A very kind friend,’ said Margaret, when her father did not answer.

Frederick was silent for a time. At last he spoke:

‘Margaret, it is painful to think I can never thank those who have shown you kindness. Your acquaintances and mine must be separate. Unless, indeed, I run the chances of a court-martial, or unless you and my father would come to Spain.’ He threw out this last suggestion as a kind of feeler; and then suddenly made the plunge. ‘You don’t know how I wish you would. I have a good position—the chance of a better,’ continued he, reddening like a girl. ‘That Dolores Barbour that I was telling you of, Margaret—I only wish you knew her; I am sure you would like—no, love is the right word, like is so poor—you would love her, father, if you knew her. She is not eighteen; but if she is in the same mind another year, she is to be my wife. Mr. Barbour won’t let us call it an engagement. But if you would come, you would find friends everywhere, besides Dolores. Think of it, father. Margaret, be on my side.’

‘No—no more removals for me,’ said Mr. Hale. ‘One removal has cost me my wife. No more removals in this life. She will be here; and here will I stay out my appointed time.’

‘Oh, Frederick,’ said Margaret, ‘tell us more about her. I never thought of this; but I am so glad. You will have some one to love and care for you out there. Tell us all about it.’

‘In the first place, she is a Roman Catholic. That’s the only objection I anticipated. But my father’s change of opinion—nay, Margaret, don’t sigh.’

Margaret had reason to sigh a little more before the conversation ended. Frederick himself was Roman Catholic in fact, though not in profession as yet. This was, then, the reason why his sympathy in her extreme distress at her father’s leaving the Church had been so faintly expressed in his letters. She had thought it was the carelessness of a sailor; but the truth was, that even then he was himself inclined to give up the form of religion into which he had been baptised, only that his opinions were tending in exactly the opposite direction to those of his father. How much love had to do with this change not even Frederick himself could have told. Margaret gave up talking about this branch of the subject at last; and, returning to the fact of the engagement, she began to consider it in some fresh light:

‘But for her sake, Fred, you surely will try and clear yourself of the exaggerated charges brought against you, even if the charge of mutiny itself be true. If there were to be a court-martial, and you could find your witnesses, you might, at any rate, show how your disobedience to authority was because that authority was unworthily exercised.’

Mr. Hale roused himself up to listen to his son’s answer.

‘In the first place, Margaret, who is to hunt up my witnesses? All of them are sailors, drafted off to other ships, except those whose evidence would go for very little, as they took part, or sympathised in the affair. In the next place, allow me to tell you, you don’t know what a court-martial is, and consider it as an assembly where justice is administered, instead of what it really is—a court where authority weighs nine-tenths in the balance, and evidence forms only the other tenth. In such cases, evidence itself can hardly escape being influenced by the prestige of authority.’

‘But is it not worth trying, to see how much evidence might be discovered and arrayed on your behalf? At present, all those who knew you formerly, believe you guilty without any shadow of excuse. You have never tried to justify yourself, and we have never known where to seek for proofs of your justification. Now, for Miss Barbour’s sake, make your conduct as clear as you can in the eye of the world. She may not care for it; she has, I am sure, that trust in you that we all have; but you ought not to let her ally herself to one under such a serious charge, without showing the world exactly how it is you stand. You disobeyed authority—that was bad; but to have stood by, without word or act, while the authority was brutally used, would have been infinitely worse. People know what you did; but not the motives that elevate it out of a crime into an heroic protection of the weak. For Dolores’ sake, they ought to know.’

‘But how must I make them know? I am not sufficiently sure of the purity and justice of those who would be my judges, to give myself up to a court-martial, even if I could bring a whole array of truth-speaking witnesses. I can’t send a bellman about, to cry aloud and proclaim in the streets what you are pleased to call my heroism. No one would read a pamphlet of self-justification so long after the deed, even if I put one out.’

‘Will you consult a lawyer as to your chances of exculpation?’ asked Margaret, looking up, and turning very red.

‘I must first catch my lawyer, and have a look at him, and see how I like him, before I make him into my confidant. Many a briefless barrister might twist his conscience into thinking, that he could earn a hundred pounds very easily by doing a good action—in giving me, a criminal, up to justice.’

‘Nonsense, Frederick!—because I know a lawyer on whose honour I can rely; of whose cleverness in his profession people speak very highly; and who would, I think, take a good deal of trouble for any of—of Aunt Shaw’s relations Mr. Henry Lennox, papa.’

‘I think it is a good idea,’ said Mr. Hale. ‘But don’t propose anything which will detain Frederick in England. Don’t, for your mother’s sake.’

‘You could go to London to-morrow evening by a night-train,’ continued Margaret, warming up into her plan. ‘He must go to-morrow, I’m afraid, papa,’ said she, tenderly; ‘we fixed that, because of Mr. Bell, and Dixon’s disagreeable acquaintance.’

‘Yes; I must go to-morrow,’ said Frederick decidedly.

Mr. Hale groaned. ‘I can’t bear to part with you, and yet I am miserable with anxiety as long as you stop here.’

‘Well then,’ said Margaret, ‘listen to my plan. He gets to London on Friday morning. I will—you might—no! it would be better for me to give him a note to Mr. Lennox. You will find him at his chambers in the Temple.’

‘I will write down a list of all the names I can remember on board the Orion. I could leave it with him to ferret them out. He is Edith’s husband’s brother, isn’t he? I remember your naming him in your letters. I have money in Barbour’s hands. I can pay a pretty long bill, if there is any chance of success Money, dear father, that I had meant for a different purpose; so I shall only consider it as borrowed from you and Margaret.’

‘Don’t do that,’ said Margaret. ‘You won’t risk it if you do. And it will be a risk only it is worth trying. You can sail from London as well as from Liverpool?’

‘To be sure, little goose. Wherever I feel water heaving under a plank, there I feel at home. I’ll pick up some craft or other to take me off, never fear. I won’t stay twenty-four hours in London, away from you on the one hand, and from somebody else on the other.’

It was rather a comfort to Margaret that Frederick took it into his head to look over her shoulder as she wrote to Mr. Lennox. If she had not been thus compelled to write steadily and concisely on, she might have hesitated over many a word, and been puzzled to choose between many an expression, in the awkwardness of being the first to resume the intercourse of which the concluding event had been so unpleasant to both sides. However, the note was taken from her before she had even had time to look it over, and treasured up in a pocket-book, out of which fell a long lock of black hair, the sight of which caused Frederick’s eyes to glow with pleasure.

‘Now you would like to see that, wouldn’t you?’ said he. ‘No! you must wait till you see her herself She is too perfect to be known by fragments. No mean brick shall be a specimen of the building of my palace.’