North and South
me as a lover? Not yet, I see—there is no hurry—but some time——”
She was silent for a minute or two, trying to discover the truth as it
was in her own heart, before replying, then she said:
“I have never thought of—you, but as a friend. I like to think of you
so; but I am sure I could never think of you as anything else. Pray let
us both forget that all this” (“disagreeable,” she was going to say, but
stopped short) “conversation has taken place.”
He paused before he replied. Then, in his habitual coldness of tone, he
answered:
“Of course, as your feelings are so decided, and as this conversation
has been so evidently unpleasant to you, it had better not be
remembered. That is all very fine in theory, that plan of forgetting
whatever is painful, but it will be somewhat difficult for me, at least,
to carry it into execution.”
“You are vexed,” said she, sadly; “yet how can I help it?”
She looked so truly grieved as she said this, that he struggled for a
moment with his real disappointment, and then answered more cheerfully,
but still with a little hardness in his tone:
“You should make allowances for the mortification, not only of a lover,
Margaret, but of a man not given to romance in general—prudent,
worldly, as some people call me—who has been carried out of his usual
habits by the force of a passion—well, we will say no more of that; but
in the one outlet which he has formed for the deeper and better feelings
of his nature, he meets with rejection and repulse. I shall have to
console myself with scorning my own folly. A struggling barrister to
think of matrimony!”
Margaret could not answer this. The whole tone of it annoyed her. It
seemed to touch on and call out all the points of difference which had
often repelled her in him; while yet he was the pleasantest man, the
most sympathising friend, the person of all others who understood her
best in Harley Street. She felt a tinge of contempt mingle itself with
her pain at having refused him. Her beautiful lip curled in a slight
disdain. It was well that, having made the round of the garden, they
came suddenly upon Mr. Hale, whose whereabouts had been quite forgotten
by them. He had not yet finished the pear, which he had delicately
peeled in one long strip of silver-paper thinness, and which he was
enjoying in a deliberate manner. It was like the story of the eastern
king, who dipped his head into a basin of water, at the magician’s
command, and ere he instantly took it out went through the experience of
a lifetime. Margaret felt stunned, and unable to recover her
self-possession enough to join in the trivial conversation that ensued
between her father and Mr. Lennox. She was grave, and little disposed to
speak; full of wonder when Mr. Lennox would go, and allow her to relax
into thought on the events of the last quarter of an hour. He was almost
as anxious to take his departure as she was for him to leave; but a few
minutes light and careless talking, carried on at whatever effort, was a
sacrifice which he owed to his mortified vanity, or his self-respect. He
glanced from time to time at her sad and pensive face.
“I am not so indifferent to her as she believes,” thought he to himself.
“I do not give up hope.”
Before a quarter of an hour was over, he had fallen into a way of
conversing with quiet sarcasm; speaking of life in London and life in
the country, as if he were conscious of his second mocking self, and
afraid of his own satire. Mr. Hale was puzzled. His visitor was a
different man to what he had seen him before at the wedding-breakfast,
and at dinner to-day; a lighter, cleverer, more worldly man, and, as
such, dissonant to Mr. Hale. It was a relief to all three when Mr.
Lennox said that he must go directly if he meant to catch the five
o’clock train. They proceeded to the house to find Mrs. Hale, and wish
her good-bye. At the last moment, Henry Lennox’s real self broke through
the crust.
“Margaret, don’t despise me; I have a heart, notwithstanding all this
good-for-nothing way of talking. As a proof of it, I believe I love you
more than ever—if I do not hate you—for the disdain with which you
have listened to me during this last half-hour. Good-bye,
Margaret—Margaret!”
CHAPTER IV.
DOUBTS AND DIFFICULTIES.
“Cast me upon some naked shore,
Where I may tracke
Only the print of some sad wracke,
If thou be there though the seas roare,
I shall no gentler calm implore.”
HABINGTON.
He was gone. The house was shut up for the evening. No more deep blue
skies or crimson and amber tints. Margaret went up to dress for the
early tea, finding Dixon in a pretty temper from the interruption which
a visitor had naturally occasioned on a busy day. She showed it by
brushing away viciously at Margaret’s hair, under pretence of being in a
great hurry to go to Mrs. Hale. Yet, after all, Margaret had to wait a
long time in the drawing-room before her mother came down. She sat by
herself at the fire, with unlighted candles on the table behind her,
thinking over the day, the happy walk, happy sketching, cheerful
pleasant dinner, and the uncomfortable, miserable walk in the garden.
How different men were to women! Here was she disturbed and unhappy,
because her instinct had made anything but a refusal impossible; while
he, not many minutes after he had met with a rejection of what ought to
have been the deepest, holiest proposal of his life, could speak as if
briefs, success, and all its superficial consequences of a good house,
clever and agreeable society, were the sole avowed objects of his
desires. Oh dear! how she could have loved him if he had but been
different, with a difference which she felt, on reflection, to be one
that went low—deep down. Then she took it into her head that, after
all, his lightness might be but assumed, to cover a bitterness of
disappointment which would have been stamped on her own heart if she had
loved and been rejected.
Her mother came into the room before this whirl of thoughts was adjusted
into anything like order. Margaret had to shake off the recollections of
what had been done and said through the day, and turn a sympathising
listener to the account of how Dixon had complained that the
ironing-blanket had been burnt again; and how Susan Lightfoot had been
seen with artificial flowers in her bonnet, thereby giving evidence of a
vain and giddy character. Mr. Hale sipped his tea in abstracted silence;
Margaret had the responses all to herself. She wondered how her father
and mother could be so forgetful, so regardless of their companion
through the day, as never to mention his name. She forgot that he had
not made them an offer.
After tea Mr. Hale got up, and stood with his elbow on the
chimney-piece, leaning his head on his hand, musing over something, and
from time to time sighing deeply. Mrs. Hale went out to consult with
Dixon about some winter clothing for the poor. Margaret was preparing
her mother’s worsted work, and rather shrinking from the thought of the
long evening, and wishing bed-time were come that she might go over the
events of the day again.
“Margaret!” said Mr. Hale, at last, in a sort of sudden desperate way,
that made her start. “Is that tapestry thing of immediate consequence? I
mean, can you leave it and come into my study? I want to speak to you
about something very serious to us all.”
“Very serious to us all.” Mr. Lennox had never had the opportunity of
having any private conversation with her father after her refusal, or
else that would indeed be a very serious affair. In the first place,
Margaret felt guilty and ashamed of having grown so much into a woman as
to be thought of in marriage; and secondly, she did not know if her
father might not be displeased that she had taken upon herself to
decline Mr. Lennox’s proposal. But she soon felt it was not about
anything, which having only lately and suddenly occurred, could have
given rise to any complicated thoughts, that her father wished to speak
to her. He made her take a chair by him; he stirred the fire, snuffed
the candles, and sighed once or twice before he could make up his mind
to say—and it came out with a jerk after all—“Margaret! I am going to
leave Helstone.”
“Leave Helstone, papa! But why?”
Mr. Hale did not answer for a minute or two. He played with some papers
on the table in a nervous and confused manner, opening his lips to speak
several times, but closing them again without having the courage to
utter a word. Margaret could not bear the sight of the suspense, which
was even more distressing to her father than to herself.
“But why, dear papa? Do tell me!”
He looked up at her suddenly, and then said with a slow and enforced
calmness,
“Because I must no longer be a minister in the Church of England.”
Margaret had imagined nothing less than that some of the preferments
which her mother had so much desired had befallen her father at
last—something that would force him to leave beautiful, beloved
Helstone, and perhaps compel him to go and live in some of the stately
and silent Closes which Margaret had seen from time to time in Cathedral
towns. They were grand and imposing places, but if, to go there, it was
necessary to leave Helstone as a home for ever, that would have been a
sad, long, lingering pain. But nothing to the shock she received from
Mr. Hale’s last speech. What could he mean? It was all the worse for
being so mysterious. The aspect of piteous distress on his face, almost
imploring a merciful and kind judgment from his child, gave her a sudden
sickening. Could he have become implicated in anything Frederick had
done? Frederick was an outlaw. Had her father, out of a natural love for
his son, connived at any—
“Oh! what is it? do speak, papa! tell me all! Why can you no longer be a
clergyman? Surely, if the bishop were told all we know about Frederick,
and the hard unjust—”
“It is nothing about Frederick; the bishop would have nothing to do with
that. It is all myself. Margaret, I will tell you about it. I will
answer any questions this once, but after to-night let us never speak of
it again. I can meet the consequences of my painful, miserable doubts;
but it is an effort beyond me to speak of what has caused me so much
suffering.”
“Doubts, papa! Doubts as to religion?” asked Margaret, more shocked than
ever.
“No! not doubts as to religion; not the slightest injury to that.”
He paused. Margaret sighed, as if standing on the verge of some new
horror. He began again, speaking rapidly, as if to get over a set task:
“You could not understand it all, if I told you—my anxiety, for years
past, to know whether I had any right to hold my living—my efforts to
quench my smouldering doubts by the authority of the Church. Oh!
Margaret, how I love the holy Church from which I am to be shut out!” He
could not go on for a moment or two. Margaret could not tell what to
say; it seemed to her as terribly mysterious as if her father were about
to turn Mahometan.
“I have been reading to-day of the two thousand who were ejected from
their churches,”—continued Mr. Hale, smiling faintly,—“trying to steal
some of their bravery; but it is of no use—no use—I cannot help
feeling it acutely.”
“But, papa, have you well considered? Oh! it seems so terrible, so
shocking,” said Margaret, suddenly bursting into tears. The one staid
foundation of her home, of her idea of her beloved father, seemed
reeling and rocking. What could she say? What was to be done? The sight
of her distress made Mr. Hale nerve himself, in order to try and comfort
her. He swallowed down the dry choking sobs which had been heaving up
from his heart hitherto, and going to his bookcase he took down a
volume, which he had often been reading lately, and from which he