North and South
“I have never named it to either my brother or your cousin,” said Mr.
Lennox, with a little professional dryness of implied reproach.
“Never mind, Margaret. I am not living in a talking, babbling world, nor
yet among people who are trying to worm facts out of me; you needn’t
look so frightened because you have let the cat out of the bag to a
faithful old hermit like me. I shall never name his having been in
England; I shall be out of temptation, for no one will ask me. Stay!”
(interrupting himself rather abruptly). “Was it at your mother’s
funeral?”
“He was with mamma when she died,” said Margaret, softly.
“To be sure! To be sure! Why, some one asked me if he had not been over
then, and I denied it stoutly—not many weeks ago—who could it have
been? Oh! I recollect!”
But he did not say the name; and although Margaret would have given much
to know if her suspicions were right, and it had been Mr. Thornton who
had made the enquiry, she could not ask the question of Mr. Bell, much
as she longed to do so.
There was a pause for a moment or two. Then Mr. Lennox said, addressing
himself to Margaret, “I suppose as Mr. Bell is now acquainted with all
the circumstances attending your brother’s unfortunate dilemma, I cannot
do better than inform him exactly how the research into the evidence we
once hoped to produce in his favour stands at present. So, if he will do
me the honour to breakfast with me to-morrow, we will go over the names
of these missing gentry.”
“I should like to hear all the particulars, if I may. Cannot you come
here? I dare not ask you both to breakfast, though I am sure you would
be welcome. But let me know all you can about Frederick, even though
there may be no hope at present.”
“I have an engagement at half-past eleven. But I will certainly come if
you wish it,” replied Mr. Lennox with a little after-thought of extreme
willingness, which made Margaret shrink into herself, and almost wish
that she had not proposed her natural request. Mr. Bell got up and
looked around him for his hat, which had been removed to make room for
tea.
“Well!” said he, “I don’t know what Mr. Lennox is inclined to do, but
I’m disposed to be moving off homewards. I’ve been a journey to-day, and
journeys begin to tell upon my sixty and odd years.”
“I believe I shall stay and see my brother and sister,” said Mr. Lennox,
making no movement of departure. Margaret was seized with a shy awkward
dread of being left alone with him. The scene on the little terrace in
the Helstone garden was so present to her, that she could hardly help
believing it was so with him.
“Don’t go yet, please Mr. Bell,” said she, hastily. “I want you to see
Edith; and I want Edith to know you. Please!” said she, laying a light
but determined hand on his arm. He looked at her, and saw the confusion
stirring in her countenance; he sate down again, as if her little touch
had been possessed of resistless strength.
“You see how she overpowers me, Mr. Lennox,” said he. “And I hope you
noticed the happy choice of her expressions; she wants me to ‘see’ this
cousin Edith, who, I am told, is a great beauty; but she has the honesty
to change her word when she comes to me—Mrs. Lennox is to ‘know’ me. I
suppose I am not much to ‘see,’ eh, Margaret?”
He joked, to give her time to recover from the slight flutter which he
had detected in her manner on his proposal to leave; and she caught the
tone, and threw the ball back. Mr. Lennox wondered how his brother, the
Captain, could have reported her as having lost all her good looks. To
be sure, in her quiet black dress, she was a contrast to Edith, dancing
in her white crape mourning, and long floating golden hair, all softness
and glitter. She dimpled and blushed most becomingly when introduced to
Mr. Bell, conscious that she had her reputation as a beauty to keep up,
and that it would not do to have a Mordecai refusing to worship and
admire, even in the shape of an old Fellow of a College, which nobody
had ever heard of. Mrs. Shaw and Captain Lennox, each in their separate
way, gave Mr. Bell a kind and sincere welcome, winning him over to like
them almost in spite of himself, especially when he saw how naturally
Margaret took her place as sister and daughter of the house.
“What a shame that we were not at home to receive you,” said Edith.
“You, too, Henry! though I don’t know that we should have stayed at home
for you. And for Mr. Bell! for Margaret’s Mr. Bell——”
“There is no knowing what sacrifices you would not have made,” said her
brother-in-law. “Even a dinner-party! and the delight of wearing this
very becoming dress.”
Edith did not know whether to frown or to smile, but it did not suit Mr.
Lennox to drive her to the first of these alternatives; so he went on.
“Will you show your readiness to make sacrifices to-morrow morning,
first by asking me to breakfast, to meet Mr. Bell, and secondly, by
being so kind as to order it at half-past nine, instead of at ten
o’clock? I have some letters and papers that I want to show to Miss Hale
and Mr. Bell.”
“I hope Mr. Bell will make our house his own during his stay in London,”
said Captain Lennox. “I am only so sorry we cannot offer him a bedroom.”
“Thank you. I am much obliged to you. You would only think me a churl if
you had, for I should decline it, I believe, in spite of all the
temptations of such agreeable company,” said Mr. Bell, bowing all round,
and secretly congratulating himself on the neat turn he had given to his
sentence, which, if put into plain language, would have been more to
this effect: “I couldn’t stand the restraints of such a proper-behaved
and civil-spoken people as these are: it would be like meat without
salt. I’m thankful they haven’t a bed. And how well I rounded my
sentence! I’m absolutely catching the trick of good manners.”
His self-satisfaction lasted him till he was fairly out in the streets,
walking side by side with Henry Lennox. Here he suddenly remembered
Margaret’s little look of entreaty as she urged him to stay longer, and
he also recollected a few hints given him long ago by an acquaintance of
Mr. Lennox’s, as to his admiration of Margaret. It gave a new direction
to his thoughts. “You have known Miss Hale for a long time, I believe.
How do you think her looking? She strikes me as pale and ill.”
“I thought her looking remarkably well. Perhaps not when I first
came—now I think of. But certainly, when she grew animated, she looked
as well as ever I saw her do.”
“She has had a great deal to go through,” said Mr. Bell.
“Yes! I have been sorry to hear of all she has had to bear; not merely
the common and universal sorrow arising from death, but all the
annoyance which her father’s conduct must have caused her, and then——”
“Her father’s conduct!” said Mr. Bell, in an accent of surprise. “You
must have heard some wrong statement. He behaved in the most
conscientious manner. He showed more resolute strength than I should
ever have given him credit for formerly.”
“Perhaps I have been wrongly informed. But I have been told, by his
successor in the living—a clever sensible man, and a thoroughly active
clergyman—that there was no call upon Mr. Hale to do what he did,
relinquish the living, and throw himself and his family on the tender
mercies of private teaching in a manufacturing town; the bishop had
offered him another living, it is true, but if he had come to entertain
certain doubts, he could have remained where he was, and so had no
occasion to resign. But the truth is, these country clergymen live such
isolated lives—isolated, I mean, from all intercourse with men of equal
cultivation with themselves, by whose minds they might regulate their
own, and discover when they were going either too fast or too slow—that
they are very apt to disturb themselves with imaginary doubts as to the
articles of faith, and throw up certain opportunities of doing good for
very uncertain fancies of their own.”
“I differ from you. I do not think they are very apt to do as my poor
friend Hale did.” Mr. Bell was inwardly chafing.
“Perhaps I used too general an expression in saying ‘very apt.’ But
certainly, their lives are such as very often to produce either
inordinate self-sufficiency, or a morbid state of conscience,” replied
Mr. Lennox with perfect coolness.
“You don’t meet with any self-sufficiency among the lawyers, for
instance?” asked Mr. Bell. “And seldom, I imagine, any cases of morbid
conscience.” He was becoming more and more vexed, and forgetting his
lately-caught trick of good manners. Mr. Lennox saw now that he had
annoyed his companion; and as he had talked pretty much for the sake of
saying something, and so passing the time away while their road lay
together, he was very indifferent as to the exact side he took upon the
question, and quietly came round by saying: “To be sure, there is
something fine in a man of Mr. Hale’s age leaving his home of twenty
years, and giving up all settled habits, for an idea which was probably
erroneous—but that does not matter—an untangible thought. One cannot
help admiring him, with a mixture of pity in one’s admiration, something
like what one feels for Don Quixote. Such a gentleman as he was too! I
shall never forget the refined and simple hospitality he showed to me
that last day at Helstone.”
Only half-mollified, and yet anxious, in order to lull certain qualms of
his own conscience, to believe that Mr. Hale’s conduct had a tinge of
Quixotism in it, Mr. Bell growled out—“Aye! And you don’t know Milton.
Such a change from Helstone! It is years since I have been at
Helstone—but I’ll answer for it, it is standing there yet—every stick
and every stone as it has done for the last century, while Milton! I go
there every four or five years—and I was born there—yet I do assure
you, I often lose my way—aye, among the very piles of warehouses that
are built upon my father’s orchard. Do we part here? Well, good-night,
sir; I suppose we shall meet in Harley Street to-morrow morning.”
CHAPTER XLV.
NOT ALL A DREAM.
“Where are the sounds that swam along
The buoyant air when I was young;
The last vibration now is o’er,
And they who listened are no more;
Ah! let me close my eyes and dream.”
W. S. LANDOR.
The idea of Helstone had been suggested to Mr. Bell’s waking mind by his
conversation with Mr. Lennox, and all night long it ran riot through his
dreams. He was again the tutor in the college where he now held the rank
of Fellow; it was again a long vacation, and he was staying with his
newly-married friend, the proud husband, and happy Vicar of Helstone.
Over babbling brooks they took impossible leaps, which seemed to keep
them whole days suspended in the air. Time and space were not, though
all other things seemed real. Every event was measured by the emotions
of the mind, not by its actual existence, for existence it had none. But
the trees were gorgeous in their autumnal leafiness—the warm odours of
flower and herb came sweet upon the sense—the young wife moved about
the house with just that mixture of annoyance at her position, as
regarded wealth, with pride in her handsome and devoted husband, which
Mr. Bell had noticed in real life a quarter of a century ago. The dream
was so like life that, when he awoke, his present life seemed a dream.
Where was he? In the close, handsomely furnished room of a London hotel!
Where were those who spoke to him, moved around him, touched him, not an
instant ago? Dead! buried! lost for evermore, as far as earth’s for
evermore would extend. He was an old man, so lately exultant in the full
strength of manhood. The utter loneliness of his life was insupportable
to think about. He got up hastily, and tried to forget what never more