North and South
it. Thornton’s is not a bad mill, as times go. Stand down, lad, and say
yo’r pretty hymn to Miss Marget. That’s right; steady on thy legs, and
right arm out as straight as a skewer. One to stop, two to stay, three
mak’ ready, and four away!”
The little fellow repeated a Methodist hymn, far above his comprehension
in point of language, but of which the swinging rhythm had caught his
ear, and which he repeated with all the developed cadence of a member of
parliament. When Margaret had duly applauded, Nicholas called for
another, and yet another, much to her surprise, as she found him thus
oddly and unconsciously led to take an interest in the sacred things
which he had formerly scouted.
It was past the usual tea-time when she reached home; but she had the
comfort of feeling that no one had been kept waiting for her; and of
thinking her own thoughts while she rested, instead of anxiously
watching another person to learn whether to be grave or gay. After tea
she resolved to examine a large packet of letters, and pick out those
that were to be destroyed.
Among them she came to four or five of Mr. Henry Lennox’s, relating to
Frederick’s affairs; and she carefully read them over again, with the
sole intention, when she began, to ascertain exactly on how fine a
chance the justification of her brother hung. But when she had finished
the last, and weighed the pros and cons, the little personal revelation
of character contained in them forced itself on her notice. It was
evident enough, from the stiffness of the wording, that Mr. Lennox had
never forgotten his relation to her in any interest he might feel in the
subject of the correspondence. They were clever letters; Margaret saw
that in a twinkling; but she missed out of them all hearty and genial
atmosphere. They were to be preserved, however, as valuable; so she laid
them carefully on one side. When this little piece of business was
ended, she fell into a reverie; and the thought of her absent father ran
strangely in Margaret’s head that night. She almost blamed herself for
having felt her solitude (and consequently his absence) as a relief; but
these two days had set her up afresh, with new strength and brighter
hope. Plans which had lately appeared to her in the guise of tasks, now
appeared like pleasures. The morbid scales had fallen from her eyes, and
she saw her position and her work more truly. If only Mr. Thornton would
restore her the lost friendship,—nay, if he would only come from time
to time to cheer her father as in former days,—though she should never
see him, she felt as if the course of her future life, though not
brilliant in prospect, might lie clear and even before her. She sighed
as she rose up to go to bed. In spite of the “One step’s enough for
me,”—in spite of the one plain duty of devotion to her father,—there
lay at her heart an anxiety and a pang of sorrow.
And Mr. Hale thought of Margaret, that April evening, just as strangely
and as persistently as she was thinking of him. He had been fatigued by
going about among his old friends and old familiar places. He had had
exaggerated ideas of the change which his altered opinions might make in
his friends’ reception of him; but although some of them might have felt
shocked or grieved, or indignant at his falling off in the abstract, as
soon as they saw the face of the man whom they had once loved, they
forgot his opinions in himself; or only remembered them enough to give
an additional tender gravity to their manner. For Mr. Hale had not been
known to many; he had belonged to one of the smaller colleges, and had
always been shy and reserved; but those who in youth had cared to
penetrate to the delicacy of thought and feeling that lay below his
silence and indecision, took him to their hearts, with something of the
protecting kindness which they would have shown to a woman. And the
renewal of this kindliness, after the lapse of years, and an interval of
so much change, overpowered him more than any roughness or expression of
disapproval could have done.
“I’m afraid we’ve done too much,” said Mr. Bell. “You’re suffering now
from having lived so long in that Milton air.”
“I am tired,” said Mr. Hale. “But it is not Milton air. I’m fifty-five
years of age, and that little fact of itself accounts for any loss of
strength.”
“Nonsense! I’m upwards of sixty, and feel no loss of strength, either
bodily or mental. Don’t let me hear you talking so. Fifty-five! why,
you’re quite a young man.”
Mr. Hale shook his head. “These last few years!” said he. But after a
minute’s pause, he raised himself from his half recumbent position, in
one of Mr. Bell’s luxurious easy-chairs, and said with a kind of
trembling earnestness:
“Bell! you’re not to think, that if I could have foreseen all that would
come of my change of opinion, and my resignation of my living—no! not
even if I could have known how _she_ would have suffered,—that I would
undo it—the act of open acknowledgment that I no longer held the same
faith as the church in which I was a priest. As I think now, even if I
could have foreseen that cruellest martyrdom of suffering, through the
sufferings of one whom I loved, I would have done just the same as far
as that step of openly leaving the church went. I might have done
differently, and acted more wisely, in all that I subsequently did for
my family. But I don’t think God endued me with over-much wisdom or
strength,” he added, falling back into his old position.
Mr. Bell blew his nose ostentatiously before answering. Then he said:
“He gave you strength to do what your conscience told you was right; and
I don’t see that we need any higher or holier strength than that; or
wisdom either. I know I have not that much; and yet men set me down in
their fool’s books as a wise man; an independent character;
strong-minded, and all that cant. The veriest idiot who obeys his own
simple law of right, if it be but in wiping his shoes on a door-mat, is
wiser and stronger than I. But what gulls men are!”
There was a pause. Mr. Hale spoke first, in continuation of his thought:
“About Margaret.”
“Well! about Margaret. What then?”
“If I die——”
“Nonsense!”
“What will become of her—I often think? I suppose the Lennoxes will ask
her to live with them. I try to think they will. Her Aunt Shaw loved her
very well in her own quiet way; but she forgets to love the absent.”
“A very common fault. What sort of people are the Lennoxes?”
“He, handsome, fluent, and agreeable. Edith, a sweet spoiled beauty.
Margaret loves her with all her heart, and Edith with as much of her
heart as she can spare.”
“Now, Hale; you know that girl of yours has got pretty nearly all my
heart. I told you that before. Of course, as your daughter, as my
god-daughter, I took great interest in her before I saw her the last
time. But this visit that I paid to you at Milton made me her slave. I
went, a willing old victim, following the car of the conqueror. For,
indeed, she looks as grand and serene as one who has struggled, and may
be struggling, and yet has the victory secure in sight. Yes, in spite of
all her present anxieties, that was the look on her face. And so, all I
have is at her service, if she needs it; and will be hers, whether she
will or no, when I die. Moreover, I myself, will be her preux chevalier,
sixty and gouty though I be. Seriously, old friend, your daughter shall
be my principal charge in life, and all the help that either my wit or
my wisdom or my willing heart can give, shall be hers. I don’t choose
her out as a subject for fretting. Something, I know of old, you must
have to worry yourself about, or you wouldn’t be happy. But you’re going
to outlive me by many a long year. You, spare, thin men are always
tempting and always cheating Death! It’s the stout, florid fellows like
me, that always go off first.”
If Mr. Bell had had a prophetic eye he might have seen the torch all but
inverted, and the angel with the grave and composed face standing very
nigh, beckoning to his friend. That night Mr. Hale laid his head down
upon the pillow on which it never more should stir with life. The
servant who entered his room in the morning, received no answer to his
speech; drew near the bed, and saw the calm, beautiful face lying white
and cold under the ineffaceable seal of death. The attitude was
exquisitely easy; there had been no pain—no struggle. The action of the
heart must have ceased as he lay down.
Mr. Bell was stunned by the shock; and only recovered when the time came
for being angry at every suggestion of his man’s.
“A coroner’s inquest? Pooh. You don’t think I poisoned him! Dr. Forbes
says it is just the natural end of a heart complaint. Poor old Hale! You
wore out that tender heart of yours before its time. Poor old friend!
how he talked of his—— Wallis, pack up a carpet-bag for me in five
minutes. Here have I been talking. Pack it up, I say. I must go to
Milton by the next train.”
The bag was packed, the cab ordered, the railway reached, in twenty
minutes from the time of this decision. The London train whizzed by,
drew back some yards, and in Mr. Bell was hurried by the impatient
guard. He threw himself back in his seat, to try, with closed eyes, to
understand how one in life yesterday could be dead to-day; and shortly
tears stole out between his grizzled eye-lashes, at the feeling of which
he opened his keen eyes, and looked as severely cheerful as his set
determination could make him. He was not going to blubber before a set
of strangers. Not he!
There was no set of strangers, only one sitting far from him on the same
side. By-and-by Mr. Bell peered at him, to discover what manner of man
it was that might have been observing his emotion; and behind the great
sheet of the outspread “Times,” he recognized Mr. Thornton.
“Why, Thornton! is that you?” said he, removing hastily to a closer
proximity. He shook Mr. Thornton vehemently by the hand, until the gripe
ended in a sudden relaxation, for the hand was wanted to wipe away
tears. He had last seen Mr. Thornton in his friend Hale’s company.
“I’m going to Milton, bound on a melancholy errand. Going to break to
Hale’s daughter the news of his sudden death!”
“Death! Mr. Hale dead!”
“Ay; I keep saying it to myself, ‘Hale is dead!’ but it doesn’t make it
any the more real. Hale is dead for all that. He went to bed well, to
all appearance, last night, and was quite cold this morning when my
servant went to call him.”
“Where? I don’t understand!”
“At Oxford. He came to stay with me: hadn’t been in Oxford this
seventeen years—and this is the end of it.”
Not one word was spoken for above a quarter of an hour. Then Mr.
Thornton said:
“And she!” and stopped full short.
“Margaret you mean. Yes! I am going to tell her. Poor fellow! how full
his thoughts were of her all last night! Good God! Last night only. And
how immeasurably distant he is now! But I take Margaret as my child for
his sake. I said last night I would take her for her own sake. Well, I
take her for both.”
Mr. Thornton made one or two fruitless attempts to speak, before he
could get out the words:
“What will become of her?”
“I rather fancy there will be two people waiting for her: myself for
one. I would take a live dragon into my house to live, if by hiring such
a chaperon, and setting up an establishment of my own, I could make my
old age happy with having Margaret for a daughter. But there are those
Lennoxes!”
“Who are they?” asked Mr. Thornton with trembling interest.
“Oh, smart London people, who very likely will think that they’ve the
best right to her. Captain Lennox married her cousin—the girl she was
brought up with. Good enough people, I dare say. And there’s her Aunt,