North and South
“By no means. What I do exclude is the remorse afterwards. Blot your
misdeeds out (if you are particularly conscientious), by a good deed, as
soon as you can; just as we did a correct sum at school on the slate,
where an incorrect one was only half rubbed out. It was better than
wetting our sponge with our tears; both less loss of time where tears
had to be waited for, and a better effect at last.”
If Margaret thought Frederick’s theory rather a rough one at first, she
saw how he worked it out into continual production of kindness in fact.
After a bad night with his mother (for he insisted on taking his turn as
a sitter-up) he was busy next morning before breakfast, contriving a
leg-rest for Dixon, who was beginning to feel the fatigues of watching.
At breakfast-time, he interested Mr. Hale with vivid, graphic, rattling
accounts of the wild life he had led in Mexico, South America, and
elsewhere. Margaret would have given up the effort in despair to rouse
Mr. Hale out of his dejection; it would even have affected herself and
rendered her incapable of talking at all. But Fred, true to his theory,
did something perpetually; and talking was the only thing to be done,
besides eating, at breakfast.
Before the night of that day, Dr. Donaldson’s opinion was proved to be
too well founded. Convulsions came on; and when they ceased, Mrs. Hale
was unconscious. Her husband might lie by her shaking the bed with his
sobs; her son’s strong arms might lift her tenderly up into a
comfortable position; her daughter’s hands might bathe her face; but she
knew them not. She would never recognise them again, till they met in
Heaven.
Before the morning came all was over.
Then Margaret rose from her trembling and despondency, and became as a
strong angel of comfort to her father and brother. For Frederick had
broken down now, and all his theories were of no use to him. He cried so
violently when shut up in his little room at night, that Margaret and
Dixon came down in affright to warn him to be quiet: for the house
partitions were but thin, and the next door neighbours might easily hear
his youthful passionate sobs, so different from the slower trembling
agony of after-life, when we become inured to grief, and dare not be
rebellious against the inexorable doom, knowing who it is that decrees.
Margaret sate with her father in the room of the dead. If he had cried,
she would have been thankful. But he sate by the bed quite quietly;
only, from time to time, he uncovered the face, and stroked it gently,
making a kind of soft inarticulate noise, like that of some
mother-animal caressing her young. He took no notice of Margaret’s
presence. Once or twice she came up to kiss him; and he submitted to it,
giving her a little push away when she had done, as if her affection
disturbed him from his absorption in the dead. He started when he heard
Frederick’s cries, and shook his head:—“Poor boy! poor boy!” he said,
and then took no more notice. Margaret’s heart ached within her. She
could not think of her own loss in thinking of her father’s case. The
night was wearing away, and the day was at hand, when, without a word of
preparation, Margaret’s voice broke upon the stillness of the room, with
a clearness of sound that startled even herself: “Let not your heart be
troubled,” it said; and she went steadily on through all that chapter of
unspeakable consolation.
CHAPTER XXXI.
“SHOULD AULD ACQUAINTANCE BE FORGOT.”
“Show not that manner, and these features all,
The serpent’s cunning, and the sinner’s fall?”
CRABBE.
The chill, shivery October morning came; not the October morning of the
country, with soft, silvery mists, clearing off before the sunbeams that
bring out all the gorgeous beauty of colouring, but the October morning
of Milton, whose silvery mists were heavy fogs, and where the sun could
only show long dusky streets when he did break through and shine.
Margaret went languidly about, assisting Dixon in her task of arranging
the house. Her eyes were continually blinded by tears, but she had no
time to give way to regular crying. The father and brother depended
upon her; while they were giving way to grief, she must be working,
planning, considering. Even the necessary arrangements for the funeral
seemed to devolve upon her.
When the fire was bright and crackling—when everything was ready for
breakfast, and the tea-kettle was singing away, Margaret gave a last
look round the room before going to summon Mr. Hale and Frederick. She
wanted everything to look as cheerful as possible; and yet, when it did
so, the contrast between it and her own thoughts forced her into sudden
weeping. She was kneeling by the sofa, hiding her face in the cushions
that no one might hear her cry, when she was touched on the shoulder by
Dixon.
“Come, Miss Hale—come, my dear! You must not give way, or where shall
we all be? There is not another person in the house fit to give a
direction of any kind, and there is so much to be done. There’s who’s to
manage the funeral; and who’s to come to it; and where it’s to be; and
all to be settled: and Master Frederick’s like one crazed with crying,
and master never was a good one for settling; and, poor gentleman, he
goes about now as if he was lost. It’s bad enough, my dear, I know; but
death comes to us all; and you’re well off never to have lost any friend
till now.”
Perhaps so. But this seemed a loss by itself; not to bear comparison
with any other event in the world. Margaret did not take any comfort
from what Dixon said, but the unusual tenderness of the prim old
servant’s manner touched her to the heart; and, more from a desire to
show her gratitude for this than for any other reason, she roused
herself up, and smiled in answer to Dixon’s anxious look at her; and
went to tell her father and brother that breakfast was ready.
Mr. Hale came—as if in a dream, or rather with the unconscious motion
of a sleep-walker, whose eyes and mind perceive other things than what
are present. Frederick came briskly in, with a forced cheerfulness,
grasped her hand, looked into her eyes and burst into tears. She had to
try and think of little nothings to say all breakfast-time, in order to
prevent the recurrence of her companions’ thoughts too strongly to the
last meal they had taken together, when there had been a continual
strained listening for some sound or signal from the sick-room.
After breakfast, she resolved to speak to her father about the funeral.
He shook his head, and assented to all she proposed, though many of her
propositions absolutely contradicted one another. Margaret gained no
real decision from him; and was leaving the room languidly, to have a
consultation with Dixon, when Mr. Hale motioned her back to his side.
“Ask Mr. Bell,” said he in a hollow voice.
“Mr. Bell!” said she, a little surprised. “Mr. Bell of Oxford?”
“Mr. Bell,” he repeated. “Yes. He was my groom’s-man.”
Margaret understood the association.
“I will write to-day,” said she. He sank again into listlessness. All
morning she toiled on, longing for rest, but in a continual whirl of
melancholy business.
Towards evening Dixon said to her:
“I’ve done it, miss. I was really afraid for master, that he’d have a
stroke with grief. He’s been all this day with poor missus; and when
I’ve listened at the door, I’ve heard him talking to her, and talking to
her, as if she was alive. When I went in he would be quite quiet, but
all in a maze like. So I thought to myself, he ought to be roused; and
if it gives him a shock at first, it will, maybe, be the better for him
afterwards. So I’ve been and told him, that I don’t think it’s safe for
Master Frederick to be here. And I don’t. It was only on Tuesday, when I
was out, that I met a Southampton man—the first I’ve seen since I came
to Milton; they don’t make their way much up here, I think. Well, it was
young Leonards, old Leonards the draper’s son, as great a scamp as ever
lived—who plagued his father almost to death, and then ran off to sea.
I never could abide him. He was in the Orion at the same time as
Frederick, I know; though I don’t recollect if he was there at the
mutiny.”
“Did he know you?” said Margaret, eagerly.
“Why, that’s the worst of it. I don’t believe he would have known me but
for my being such a fool as to call out his name. He were a Southampton
man, in a strange place, or else I should never have been so ready to
call cousins with him, a nasty, good-for-nothing-fellow. Says he, ‘Miss
Dixon! who would ha’ thought of seeing you here? But perhaps I mistake,
and you’re Miss Dixon no longer?’ So I told him he might still address
me as an unmarried lady, though if I hadn’t been so particular, I’d had
good chances of matrimony. He was polite enough: ‘He couldn’t look at me
and doubt me.’ But I were not to be caught with such chaff from such a
fellow as him, and so I told him; and, by way of being even, I asked him
after his father (who I knew had turned him out of doors), as if they
were the best friends as ever was. So then, to spite me—for you see we
were getting savage, for all we were so civil to each other—he began to
inquire after Master Frederick, and said, what a scrape he’d got into
(as if Master Frederick’s scrapes would ever wash George Leonards white,
or make ’em look otherwise than nasty, dirty black), and how he’d be
hung for mutiny if ever he were caught, and how a hundred pound reward
had been offered for catching him, and what a disgrace he had been to
his family—all to spite me, you see, my dear, because before now I’ve
helped old Mr. Leonards to give George a good rating, down in
Southampton. So I said, there were other families as I knew, who had far
more cause to blush for their sons, and to be thankful if they could
think they were earning an honest living far away from home. To which he
made answer, like the impudent chap he is, that he were in a
confidential situation, and if I knew of any young man who had been so
unfortunate as to lead vicious courses, and wanted to turn steady, he’d
have no objection to lend him his patronage. He, indeed! Why, he’d
corrupt a saint. I’ve not felt so bad myself for years as when I were
standing talking to him the other day. I could have cried to think I
couldn’t spite him better, for he kept smiling in my face, as if he took
all my compliments for earnest; and I couldn’t see that he minded what I
said in the least, while I was mad with all his speeches.”
“But you did not tell him anything about us—about Frederick?”
“Not I,” said Dixon. “He had never the grace to ask where I was staying;
and I shouldn’t have told him if he had asked. Nor did I ask him what
his precious situation was. He was waiting for a bus, and just then it
drove up, and he hailed it. But, to plague me to the last, he turned
back before he got in, and said, ‘If you can help me to trap Lieutenant
Hale, Miss Dixon, we’ll go partners in the reward. I know you’d like to
be my partner, now wouldn’t you? Don’t be shy, but say yes.’ And he
jumped on the bus, and I saw his ugly face leering at me with a wicked
smile to think how he’d had the last word of plaguing.”
Margaret was made very uncomfortable by this account of Dixon’s.
“Have you told Frederick?” asked she.
“No,” said Dixon. “I were uneasy in my mind at knowing that bad Leonards
was in town; but there was so much else to think about that I did not
dwell on it all. But when I saw master sitting so stiff, and with his
eyes so glazed and sad, I thought it might rouse him to have to think of
Master Frederick in hiding, he would have to go, poor fellow, before Mr.
Bell came.”
“Oh, I’m not afraid of Mr. Bell; but I am afraid of this Leonards. I
must tell Frederick. What did Leonards look like?”