North and South
so much as an effort of duty, and with so little of the genial impulse
of love towards his work and its end, that Margaret was sure that it
would not be well done until he could look upon it with some kind of
zest.
CHAPTER XLI.
THE JOURNEY’S END.
I see my way as birds their trackless way—
I shall arrive! what time, what circuit first,
I ask not: but unless God sends his hail
Or blinding fire-balls, sleet, or stifling snow,
In some time—his good time—I shall arrive;
He guides me and the bird. In His good time!
BROWNING’S PARACELSUS.
So the winter was getting on, and the days were beginning to lengthen,
without bringing with them any of the brightness of hope which usually
accompanies the rays of a February sun. Mrs. Thornton had of course
entirely ceased to come to the house. Mr. Thornton came occasionally,
but his visits were addressed to her father, and were confined to the
study. Mr. Hale spoke of him as always the same; indeed, the very rarity
of their intercourse seemed to make Mr. Hale set only the higher value
on it. And from what Margaret could gather of what Mr. Thornton had
said, there was nothing in the cessation of his visits which could arise
from any umbrage or vexation. His business affairs had become
complicated during the strike, and required closer attention than he had
given to them last winter. Nay, Margaret could even discover that he
spoke from time to time of her, and always, as far as she could learn,
in the same calm friendly way, never avoiding and never seeking any
mention of her name.
She was not in spirits to raise her father’s tone of mind. The dreary
peacefulness of the present time had been preceded by so long a period
of anxiety and care—even intermixed with storms—that her mind had lost
its elasticity. She tried to find herself occupation in teaching the two
younger Boucher children, and worked hard at goodness; hard, I say most
truly, for her heart seemed dead to the end of all her efforts; and
though she made them punctually and painfully, yet she stood as far off
as ever from any cheerfulness; her life seemed still bleak and dreary.
The only thing she did well, was what she did out of unconscious piety,
the silent comforting and consoling of her father. Not a mood of his but
what found a ready sympathiser in Margaret; not a wish of his that she
did not strive to forecast, and to fulfil. They were quiet wishes to be
sure, and hardly named without hesitation and apology. All the more
complete and beautiful was her meek spirit of obedience. March brought
the news of Frederick’s marriage. He and Dolores wrote; she in
Spanish-English, as was but natural, and he with little turns and
inversions of words which proved how far the idioms of his bride’s
country were infecting him.
On the receipt of Henry Lennox’s letter, announcing how little hope
there was of his ever clearing himself at a court-martial, in the
absence of the missing witnesses, Frederick had written to Margaret a
pretty vehement letter, containing his renunciation of England as his
country; he wished he could unnative himself, and declared that he would
not take his pardon if it were offered him, nor live in the country if
he had permission to do so. All of which made Margaret cry sorely, so
unnatural did it seem to her at the first opening; but on consideration,
she saw rather in such expression the poignancy of the disappointment
which had thus crushed his hopes; and she felt that there was nothing
for it but patience. In the next letter Frederick spoke so joyfully of
the future that he had no thought for the past; and Margaret found a use
in herself for the patience she had been craving for him. She would have
to be patient. But the pretty, timid, girlish letters of Dolores were
beginning to have a charm for both Margaret and her father. The young
Spaniard was so evidently anxious to make a favourable impression upon
her lover’s English relations, that her feminine care peeped out at
every erasure; and the letters announcing the marriage, were accompanied
by a splendid black lace mantilla, chosen by Dolores herself for her
unseen sister-in-law, whom Frederick had represented as a paragon of
beauty, wisdom and virtue. Frederick’s worldly position was raised by
this marriage on to as high a level as they could desire. Barbour and
Co. was one of the most extensive Spanish houses, and into it he was
received as a junior partner. Margaret smiled a little and then sighed
as she remembered afresh her old tirades against trade. Here was her
preux chevalier of a brother turned merchant, trader! But then she
rebelled against herself, and protested silently against the confusion
implied between a Spanish merchant and a Milton millowner. Well, trade
or no trade, Frederick was very, very happy. Dolores must be charming,
and the mantilla was exquisite! And then she returned to the present
life.
Her father had occasionally experienced a difficulty in breathing this
spring, which had for the time distressed him exceedingly. Margaret was
less alarmed, as this difficulty went off completely in the intervals;
but she still was so desirous of his shaking off the liability
altogether, as to make her very urgent that he should accept Mr. Bell’s
invitation to visit him at Oxford this April. Mr. Bell’s invitation
included Margaret. Nay more, he wrote a special letter commanding her to
come; but she felt as if it would be a greater relief to her to remain
quietly at home, entirely free from any responsibility whatever, and so
to rest her mind and heart in a manner which she had not been able to do
for more than two years past.
When her father had driven off on his way to the railroad, Margaret felt
how great and long had been the pressure on her time and her spirits. It
was astonishing, almost stunning, to feel herself so much at liberty; no
one depending on her for cheering care, if not for positive happiness;
no invalid to plan and think for; she might be idle, and silent and
forgetful,—and what seemed worth more than all the other
privileges—she might be unhappy if she liked. For months past, all her
own personal cares and troubles had had to be stuffed away into a dark
cupboard; but now she had leisure to take them out, and mourn over them,
and study their nature, and seek the true method of subduing them into
the elements of peace. All these weeks she had been conscious of their
existence in a dull kind of way, though they were hidden out of sight.
Now, once for all she would consider them and appoint to each of them
its right work in her life. So she sat almost motionless for hours in
the drawing-room, going over the bitterness of every remembrance with an
unwincing resolution. Only once she cried aloud, at the stinging thought
of the faithlessness which gave birth to that abasing falsehood.
She now would not even acknowledge the force of the temptation; her
plans for Frederick had all failed, and the temptation lay there a dead
mockery,—a mockery which had never had life in it; the lie had been so
despicably foolish, seen by the light of the ensuing events, and faith
in the power of truth so infinitely the greater wisdom!
In her nervous agitation, she unconsciously opened a book of her
father’s that lay upon the table,—the words that caught her eye in it,
seemed almost made for her present state of acute self-abasement:—
“Je ne voudrois pas reprendre mon cœur en ceste sorte: meurs de
honte, aveugle, impudent, traistre et desloyal à ton Dieu, et
sembables choses; mais je voudrois le corriger par voye de
compassion. Or sus, mon pauvre cœur, nous voilà tombe dans la
fosse, laquelle nous avions tant resolu d’eschapper. Ah!
revelons-nous, et quittons-la pour jamais, reclamons la misericorde
de Dieu, et esperons en elle qu’elle nous assistera pour desormais
estra plus fermes; et remettons-nous au chemin de l’humilitè.
Courage, soyons meshuy sur nos gardes, Dieu nous aydera.”
“The way of humility. Ah,” thought Margaret, “that is what I have
missed! But courage, little heart. We will turn back, and by God’s help
we may find the lost path.”
So she rose up, and determined at once to set to on some work which
should take her out of herself. To begin with, she called in Martha, as
she passed the drawing-room door in going up-stairs, and tried to find
out what was below the grave, respectful, servant-like manner, which
crusted over her individual character with an obedience which was almost
mechanical. She found it difficult to induce Martha to speak of any of
her personal interests; but at last she touched the right chord, in
naming Mrs. Thornton. Martha’s whole face brightened, and, on a little
encouragement, out came a long story, of how her father had been in
early life connected with Mrs. Thornton’s husband—nay, had even been in
a position to show him some kindness; what, Martha hardly knew, for it
had happened when she was quite a little child; and circumstances had
intervened to separate the two families until Martha was nearly grown
up, when, her father having sunk lower and lower from his original
occupation as clerk in a warehouse, and her mother being dead, she and
her sister, to use Martha’s own expression, would have been “lost” but
for Mrs. Thornton; who sought them out, and thought for them, and cared
for them.
“I had had the fever, and was but delicate; and Mrs. Thornton and Mr.
Thornton too, they never rested till they had nursed me up in their own
house, and sent me to the sea and all. The doctor said the fever was
catching, but they cared none for that—only Miss Fanny, and she went
a-visiting these folk that she is going to marry into. So though she was
afraid at the time, it has all ended well.”
“Miss Fanny going to be married!” exclaimed Margaret.
“Yes; and to a rich gentleman, too, only he’s a deal older than she is.
His name is Watson; and his mills are somewhere out beyond Hayleigh;
it’s a very good marriage, for all he’s got such gray hair.”
At this piece of information, Margaret was silent long enough for Martha
to recover her propriety, and, with it, her habitual shortness of
answer. She swept up the hearth, asked at what time she should prepare
tea, and quitted the room with the same wooden face with which she had
entered it. Margaret had to pull herself up from indulging a bad trick,
which she had lately fallen into, of trying to imagine how every event
that she heard of in relation to Mr. Thornton would affect him: whether
he would like it or dislike it.
The next day she had the little Boucher children for their lessons, and
took a long walk, and ended by a visit to Mary Higgins. Somewhat to
Margaret’s surprise, she found Nicholas already come home from his work;
the lengthening light had deceived her as to the lateness of the
evening. He too seemed, by his manners, to have entered a little more on
the way of humility; he was quieter, and less self-asserting.
“So th’ oud gentleman’s away on his travels, is he?” said he. “Little
’uns telled me so. Eh! but the’re sharp ’uns they are; I a’most think
they beat my own wenches for sharpness, though m’appen it’s wrong to say
so, and one on ’em in her grave. There’s summut in th’ weather, I
reckon, as sets folk a-wandering. My measter, him at th’ shop yonder, is
spinning about th’ world somewhere.”
“Is that the reason you’re so soon at home to-night?” asked Margaret
innocently.
“Thou know’st nought about it, that’s all,” said he, contemptuously.
“I’m not one wi’ two faces—one for my measter, and t’other for his
back. I counted a’ th’ clocks in the town striking afore I’d leave my
work. No! yon Thornton’s good enough for to fight wi’, but too good for
to be cheated. It were you as getten me the place, and I thank yo’ for