North and South
Mrs. Shaw. There might be a way open, perhaps, by my offering to marry
that worthy lady! but that would be quite a _pis aller_. And then there’s
that brother!”
“What brother? A brother of her aunt’s?”
“No, no; a clever Lennox (the captain’s a fool, you must understand); a
young barrister, who will be setting his cap at Margaret. I know he has
had her in his mind these five years or more; one of his chums told me
as much; and he was only kept back by want of fortune. Now that will be
done away with.”
“How?” asked Mr. Thornton, too earnestly curious to be aware of the
impertinence of his question.
“Why, she’ll have my money at my death. And if this Henry Lennox is half
good enough for her, and she likes him—well! I might find another way
of getting a home through a marriage. I’m dreadfully afraid of being
tempted, at an unguarded moment, by her aunt.”
Neither Mr. Bell nor Mr. Thornton was in a laughing humour; so the
oddity of any of the speeches which the former made was unnoticed by
them. Mr. Bell whistled, without emitting any sound beyond a long
hissing breath; changed his seat, without finding comfort or rest; while
Mr. Thornton sat immovably still, his eyes fixed on one spot in the
newspaper, which he had taken up in order to give himself leisure to
think.
“Where have you been?” asked Mr. Bell, at length.
“To Havre. Trying to detect the secret of the great rise in the price of
cotton.”
“Ugh! Cotton, and speculations, and smoke, well-cleansed and
well-cared-for machinery, and unwashed and neglected hands. Poor old
Hale! Poor old Hale! If you could have known the change which it was to
him from Helstone. Do you know the New Forest at all?”
“Yes.” (Very shortly.)
“Then you can fancy the difference between it and Milton. What part were
you in? Were you ever at Helstone? a little picturesque village, like
some in the Odenwald? You know Helstone?”
“I have seen it. It was a great change to leave it and come to Milton.”
He took up his newspaper with a determined air, as if resolved to avoid
further conversation; and Mr. Bell was fain to resort to his former
occupation of trying to find out how he could best break the news to
Margaret.
She was at an upstairs window; she saw him alight; she guessed the truth
with an instinctive flash. She stood in the middle of the drawing-room,
as if arrested in her first impulse to rush downstairs, and as if by the
same restraining thought she had been turned to stone; so white and
immovable was she.
“Oh! don’t tell me! I know it from your face! You would have sent—you
would not have left him—if he were alive! Oh, papa, papa!”
CHAPTER XLII.
ALONE! ALONE!
“When some beloved voice that was to you
Both sound and sweetness, faileth suddenly,
And silence, against which you dare not cry,
Aches round you like a strong disease and new,—
What hope? what help? what music will undo
That silence to your sense?”
MRS. BROWNING.
The shock had been great. Margaret fell into a state of prostration,
which did not show itself in sobs and tears, or even find the relief of
words. She lay on the sofa with her eyes shut, never speaking but when
spoken to, and then replying in whispers. Mr. Bell was perplexed. He
dared not leave her; he dared not ask her to accompany him back to
Oxford, which had been one of the plans he had formed on the journey to
Milton, her physical exhaustion was evidently too complete for her to
undertake any such fatigue—putting the sight that she would have to
encounter out of the question. Mr. Bell sate over the fire, considering
what he had better do. Margaret lay motionless, and almost breathless by
him. He would not leave her, even for the dinner which Dixon had
prepared for him downstairs, and, with sobbing hospitality, would fain
have tempted him to eat. He had a plateful of something brought up to
him. In general, he was particular and dainty enough, and knew well each
shade of flavour in his food, but now the devilled chicken tasted like
sawdust. He minced up some of the fowl for Margaret, and peppered and
salted it well; but when Dixon, following his directions, tried to feed
her, the languid shake of head, proved that in such a state as Margaret
was in, food would only choke, not nourish her.
Mr. Bell gave a great sigh; lifted up his stout old limbs (stiff with
travelling) from their easy position, and followed Dixon out of the
room.
“I can’t leave her. I must write to them at Oxford, to see that the
preparations are made: they can be getting on with these till I arrive.
Can’t Mrs. Lennox come to her? I’ll write and tell her she must. The
girl must have some woman-friend about her, if only to talk her into a
good fit of crying.”
Dixon was crying—enough for two; but, after wiping her eyes and
steadying her voice, she managed to tell Mr. Bell, that Mrs. Lennox was
too near her confinement to be able to undertake any journey at present.
“Well! I suppose we must have Mrs. Shaw; she’s come back to England,
isn’t she?”
“Yes, sir, she’s come back; but I don’t think she will like to leave
Mrs. Lennox at such an interesting time,” said Dixon, who did not much
approve of a stranger entering the household, to share with her in her
ruling care of Margaret.
“Interesting time be——.” Mr. Bell restricted himself by coughing over
the end of his sentence. “She could be content to be at Venice or
Naples, or some of those Popish places, at the last ‘interesting time,’
which took place in Corfu, I think. And what does that little prosperous
woman’s ‘interesting time’ signify, in comparison with that poor
creature there,—that helpless, homeless, friendless, Margaret—lying as
still on that sofa as if it were an altar-tomb, and she the stone statue
on it. I tell you, Mrs. Shaw shall come. See that a room, or whatever
she wants, is got ready for her by to-morrow night. I’ll take care she
comes.”
Accordingly Mr. Bell wrote a letter, which Mrs. Shaw declared, with many
tears, to be so like one of the dear general’s when he was going to have
a fit of the gout, that she should always value and preserve it. If he
had given her the option, by requesting or urging her, as if a refusal
were possible, she might not have come—true and sincere as was her
sympathy with Margaret. It needed the sharp uncourteous command to make
her conquer her vis inertiæ and allow herself to be packed by her maid,
after the latter had completed the boxes. Edith, all cap, shawl, and
tears, came out to the top of the stairs, as Captain Lennox was taking
her mother down to the carriage:
“Don’t forget, mamma; Margaret must come and live with us. Sholto will
go to Oxford on Wednesday, and you must send word by Mr. Bell to him
when we’re to expect you. And if you want Sholto, he can go on from
Oxford to Milton. Don’t forget, mamma; you are to bring back Margaret.”
Edith re-entered the drawing-room. Mr. Henry Lennox was there, cutting
open the pages of a new Review. Without lifting his head, he said, “If
you don’t like Sholto to be so long absent from you, Edith, I hope you
will let me go down to Milton, and give what assistance I can.”
“Oh, thank you,” said Edith, “I dare say old Mr. Bell will do everything
he can, and more help may not be needed. Only one does not look for much
savoir-faire from a resident Fellow. Dear, darling Margaret; won’t it be
nice to have her here, again? You were both great allies, years ago.”
“Were we?” asked he indifferently, with an appearance of being
interested in a passage in the Review.
“Well, perhaps not—I forget. I was so full of Sholto. But doesn’t it
fall out well, that if my uncle was to die, it should be just now, when
we are come home, and settled in the old house, and quite ready to
receive Margaret? Poor thing! what a change it will be to her from
Milton! I’ll have new chintz for her bed-room, and make it look new and
bright, and cheer her up a little.”
In the same spirit of kindness, Mrs. Shaw journeyed to Milton,
occasionally dreading the first meeting, and wondering how it would be
got over; but more frequently planning how soon she could get Margaret
away from “that horrid place,” and back in the pleasant comforts of
Harley Street.
“Oh dear!” she said to her maid; “look at those chimneys! My poor
sister Hale! I don’t think I could have rested at Naples, if I had known
what it was! I must have come and fetched her and Margaret away.” And to
herself she acknowledged, that she had always thought her brother-in-law
rather a weak man, but never so weak as now, when she saw for what a
place he had exchanged the lovely Helstone home.
Margaret had remained in the same state; white, motionless, speechless,
tearless. They had told her that her aunt Shaw was coming; but she had
not expressed either surprise or pleasure, or dislike to the idea. Mr.
Bell, whose appetite had returned, and who appreciated Dixon’s
endeavours to gratify it, in vain urged upon her to taste some
sweetbreads stewed with oysters; she shook her head with the same quiet
obstinacy as on the previous day; and he was obliged to console himself
for her rejection, by eating them all himself. But Margaret was the
first to hear the stopping of the cab that brought her aunt from the
railway station. Her eyelids quivered, her lips coloured and trembled.
Mr. Bell went down to meet Mrs. Shaw; and when they came up, Margaret
was standing, trying to steady her dizzy self; and when she saw her
aunt, she went forward to the arms open to receive her, and first found
the passionate relief of tears on her aunt’s shoulder. All thoughts of
quiet habitual love, of tenderness for years, of relationship to the
dead, all that inexplicable likeness in look, tone, and gesture, that
seem to belong to one family, and which reminded Margaret so forcibly at
this moment of her mother, came in to melt and soften her numbed heart
into the overflow of warm tears.
Mr. Bell stole out of the room, and went down into the study, where he
ordered a fire, and tried to divert his thoughts by taking down and
examining the different books. Each volume brought a remembrance or a
suggestion of his dead friend. It might be a change of employment from
his two days’ work of watching Margaret, but it was no change of
thought. He was glad to catch the sound of Mr. Thornton’s voice, making
enquiry at the door. Dixon was rather cavalierly dismissing him; for
with the appearance of Mrs. Shaw’s maid, came visions of former
grandeur, of the Beresford blood, of the “station” (so she was pleased
to term it) from which her young lady had been ousted, and to which she
was now, please God, to be restored. These visions, which she had been
dwelling on with complacency in her conversation with Mrs. Shaw’s maid
(skilfully eliciting meanwhile all the circumstances of state and
consequence connected with the Harley Street establishment, for the
edification of the listening Martha), made Dixon rather inclined to be
supercilious in her treatment of any inhabitant of Milton; so, though
she always stood rather in awe of Mr. Thornton, she was as curt as she
durst be in telling him that he could see none of the inmates of the
house that night. It was rather uncomfortable to be contradicted in her
statement by Mr. Bell’s opening the study-door, and calling out:
“Thornton! is that you? Come in for a minute or two; I want to speak to
you.” So Mr. Thornton went into the study, and Dixon had to retreat into
the kitchen, and reinstate herself in her own esteem by a prodigious
story of Sir John Beresford’s coach and six, when he was high sheriff.
“I don’t know what I wanted to say to you after all. Only it’s dull
enough to sit in a room where everything speaks to you of a dead friend.
Yet Margaret and her aunt must have the drawing-room to themselves!”