The Complete Novels of Elizabeth Gaskell. Elizabeth Gaskell
it would need a longer search, Maggie lay down on the sofa, for she was very weak, and shut her eyes, and tried not to see forever and ever that mad struggling crowd lighted by the red flames.
Frank came back in an hour or so; and soft behind him — laboriously treading on tiptoe — Mr. Buxton followed. He was evidently choking down his sobs; but when he saw the white wan figure of Maggie, he held out his arms.
“My dear! my daughter!” he said, “God bless you!” He could not speak more — he was fairly crying; but he put her hand in Frank’s and kept holding them both.
“My father,” said Frank, speaking in a husky voice, while his eyes filled with tears, “had heard of it before he received my letter. I might have known that the lighthouse signals would take it fast to Liverpool. I had written a few lines to him saying I was going to you; happily they never reached — that was spared to my dear father.”
Maggie saw the look of restored confidence that passed between father and son.
“My mother?” said she at last.
“She is here,” said they both at once, with sad solemnity.
“Oh, where? Why did not you tell me?” exclaimed she, starting up. But their faces told her why.
“Edward is drowned — is dead,” said she, reading their looks.
There was no answer.
“Let me go to my mother.”
“Maggie, she is with him. His body was washed ashore last night. My father and she heard of it as they came along. Can you bear to see her? She will not leave him.”
“Take me to her,” Maggie answered.
They led her into a bed-room. Stretched on the bed lay Edward, but now so full of hope and worldly plans.
Mrs. Browne looked round, and saw Maggie. She did not get up from her place by his head; nor did she long avert her gaze from his poor face. But she held Maggie’s hand, as the girl knelt by her, and spoke to her in a hushed voice, undisturbed by tears. Her miserable heart could not find that relief.
“He is dead! — he is gone! — he will never come back again! If he had gone to America — it might have been years first — but he would have come back to me. But now he will never come back again; — never — never!”
Her voice died away, as the wailings of the night-wind die in the distance; and there was silence — silence more sad and hopeless than any passionate words of grief.
And to this day it is the same. She prizes her dead son more than a thousand living daughters, happy and prosperous as is Maggie now — rich in the love of many. If Maggie did not show such reverence to her mother’s faithful sorrows, others might wonder at her refusal to be comforted by that sweet daughter. But Maggie treats her with such tender sympathy, never thinking of herself or her own claims, that Frank, Erminia, Mr. Buxton, Nancy, and all, are reverent and sympathizing too.
Over both old and young the memory of one who is dead broods like a dove — of one who could do but little during her lifetime — who was doomed only to “stand and wait”— who was meekly content to be gentle, holy, patient, and undefiled — the memory of the invalid Mrs. Buxton.
“THERE’S ROSEMARY FOR REMEMBRANCE.”
Cranford
by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
III. A Love Affair of Long Ago
IV. A Visit to an Old Bachelor
Chapter I.
Our Society
In the first place, Cranford is in possession of the Amazons; all the holders of houses above a certain rent are women. If a married couple come to settle in the town, somehow the gentleman disappears; he is either fairly frightened to death by being the only man in the Cranford evening parties, or he is accounted for by being with his regiment, his ship, or closely engaged in business all the week in the great neighbouring commercial town of Drumble, distant only twenty miles on a railroad. In short, whatever does become of the gentlemen, they are not at Cranford. What could they do if they were there? The surgeon has his round of thirty miles, and sleeps at Cranford; but every man cannot be a surgeon. For keeping the trim gardens full of choice flowers without a weed to speck them; for frightening away little boys who look wistfully at the said flowers through the railings; for rushing out at the geese that occasionally venture in to the gardens if the gates are left open; for deciding all questions of literature and politics without troubling themselves with unnecessary reasons or arguments; for obtaining clear and correct knowledge of everybody’s affairs in the parish; for keeping their neat maid-servants in admirable order; for kindness (somewhat dictatorial) to the poor, and real tender good offices to each other whenever they are in distress, the ladies of Cranford are quite sufficient. “A man,” as one of them observed to me once, “is so in the way in the house!” Although the ladies of Cranford know all each other’s proceedings, they are exceedingly indifferent to each other’s opinions. Indeed, as each has her own individuality, not to say eccentricity, pretty strongly developed, nothing is so easy as verbal retaliation; but, somehow, good-will reigns among them