The Complete Works (Illustrated Edition). Elizabeth Gaskell
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and then to have her answers turned into subjects for contempt, and fault-finding with that sweet lady’s ways.
When Ned came home for the holidays, he had much to tell. His mother listened for hours to his tales; and proudly marked all that she could note of his progress in learning. His copy-books and writing-flourishes were a sight to behold; and his account-books contained towers and pyramids of figures.
“Ay, ay!” said Mr. Buxton, when they were shown to him; “this is grand! when I was a boy I could make a flying eagle with one stroke of my pen, but I never could do all this. And yet I thought myself a fine fellow, I warrant you. And these sums! why man! I must make you my agent. I need one, I’m sure; for though I get an accountant every two or three years to do up my books, they somehow have the knack of getting wrong again. Those quarries, Mrs. Browne, which every one says are so valuable, and for the stone out of which receive orders amounting to hundreds of pounds, what d’ye think was the profit I made last year, according to my books?”
“I’m sure I don’t know, sir; something very great, I’ve no doubt.”
“Just seven-pence three farthings,” said he, bursting into a fit of merry laughter, such as another man would have kept for the announcement of enormous profits. “But I must manage things differently soon. Frank will want money when he goes to Oxford, and he shall have it. I’m but a rough sort of fellow, but Frank shall take his place as a gentleman. Aha, Miss Maggie! and where’s my gingerbread? There you go, creeping up to Mrs. Buxton on a Wednesday, and have never taught Cook how to make gingerbread yet. Well, Ned! and how are the classics going on? Fine fellow, that Virgil! Let me see, how does it begin?
‘Arma, virumque cano, Trojae qui primus ab oris.’
That’s pretty well, I think, considering I’ve never opened him since I left school thirty years ago. To be sure, I spent six hours a day at it when I was there. Come now, I’ll puzzle you. Can you construe this?
“Infir dealis, inoak noneis; inmud eelis, inclay noneis.”
“To be sure I can,” said Edward, with a little contempt in his tone. “Can you do this, sir?
“Apud in is almi des ire,
Mimis tres i neve require,
Alo veri findit a gestis,
His miseri ne ver at restis.”
But though Edward had made much progress, and gained three prizes, his moral training had been little attended to. He was more tyrannical than ever, both to his mother and Maggie. It was a drawn battle between him and Nancy, and they kept aloof from each other as much as possible. Maggie fell into her old humble way of submitting to his will, as long as it did not go against her conscience; but that, being daily enlightened by her habits of pious aspiring thought, would not allow her to be so utterly obedient as formerly. In addition to his imperiousness, he had learned to affix the idea of cleverness to various artifices and subterfuges which utterly revolted her by their meanness.
“You are so set up, by being intimate with Erminia, that you won’t do a thing I tell you; you are as selfish and self-willed as”— he made a pause. Maggie was ready to cry.
“I will do anything, Ned, that is right.”
“Well! and I tell you this is right.”
“How can it be?” said she, sadly, almost wishing to be convinced.
“How — why it is, and that’s enough for you. You must always have a reason for everything now. You are not half so nice as you were. Unless one chops logic with you, and convinces you by a long argument, you’ll do nothing. Be obedient, I tell you. That is what a woman has to be.”
“I could be obedient to some people, without knowing their reasons, even though they told me to do silly things,” said Maggie, half to herself.
“I should like to know to whom,” said Edward, scornfully.
“To Don Quixote,” answered she, seriously; for, indeed, he was present in her mind just then, and his noble, tender, melancholy character had made a strong impression there.
Edward stared at her for a moment, and then burst into a loud fit of laughter. It had the good effect of restoring him to a better frame of mind. He had such an excellent joke against his sister, that he could not be angry with her. He called her Sancho Panza all the rest of the holidays, though she protested against it, saying she could not bear the Squire, and disliked being called by his name.
Frank and Edward seemed to have a mutual antipathy to each other, and the coldness between them was rather increased than diminished by all Mr. Buxton’s efforts to bring them together. “Come, Frank, my lad!” said he, “don’t be so stiff with Ned. His father was a dear friend of mine, and I’ve set my heart on seeing you friends. You’ll have it in your power to help him on in the world.”
But Frank answered, “He is not quite honorable, sir. I can’t bear a boy who is not quite honorable. Boys brought up at those private schools are so full of tricks!”
“Nay, my lad, there thou’rt wrong. I was brought up at a private school, and no one can say I ever dirtied my hands with a trick in my life. Good old Mr. Thompson would have flogged the life out of a boy who did anything mean or underhand.”
Chapter IV.
Summers and winters came and went, with little to mark them, except the growth of the trees, and the quiet progress of young creatures. Erminia was sent to school somewhere in France, to receive more regular instruction than she could have in the house with her invalid aunt. But she came home once a year, more lovely and elegant and dainty than ever; and Maggie thought, with truth, that ripening years were softening down her volatility, and that her aunt’s dewlike sayings had quietly sunk deep, and fertilized the soil. That aunt was fading away. Maggie’s devotion added materially to her happiness; and both she and Maggie never forgot that this devotion was to be in all things subservient to the duty which she owed to her mother.
“My love,” Mrs. Buxton had more than once said, “you must always recollect that your first duty is toward your mother. You know how glad I am to see you; but I shall always understand how it is, if you do not come. She may often want you when neither you nor I can anticipate it.”
Mrs. Browne had no great wish to keep Maggie at home, though she liked to grumble at her going. Still she felt that it was best, in every way, to keep on good terms with such valuable friends; and she appreciated, in some small degree, the advantage which her intimacy at the house was to Maggie. But yet she could not restrain a few complaints, nor withhold from her, on her return, a recapitulation of all the things which might have been done if she had only been at home, and the number of times that she had been wanted; but when she found that Maggie quietly gave up her next Wednesday’s visit as soon as she was made aware of any necessity for her presence at home, her mother left off grumbling, and took little or no notice of her absence.
When the time came for Edward to leave school, he announced that he had no intention of taking orders, but meant to become an attorney.
“It’s such slow work,” said he to his mother. “One toils away for four or five years, and then one gets a curacy of seventy pounds a-year, and no end of work to do for the money. Now the work is not much harder in a lawyer’s office, and if one has one’s wits about one, there are hundreds and thousands a-year to be picked up with mighty little trouble.”
Mrs. Browne was very sorry for this determination. She had a great desire to see her son a clergyman, like his father. She did not consider whether his character was fitted for so sacred an office; she rather thought that the profession itself, when once assumed, would purify the character; but, in fact, his fitness or unfitness for holy orders entered little into her mind. She had a respect for the profession, and his father had belonged to it.
“I had rather see you a curate