North and South
might be, in a hurried dressing for the breakfast in Harley Street.
He could not attend to all the lawyer’s details, which, as he saw, made
Margaret’s eyes dilate, and her lips grow pale, as one by one fate
decreed, or so it seemed, every morsel of evidence which would exonerate
Frederick, should fall from beneath her feet and disappear. Even Mr.
Lennox’s well-regulated professional voice took a softer, tenderer tone,
as he drew near to the extinction of the last hope. It was not that
Margaret had not been perfectly aware of the result before. It was only
that the details of each successive disappointment came with such
relentless minuteness to quench all hope, that she at last fairly gave
way to tears. Mr. Lennox stopped reading.
“I had better not go on,” said he, in a concerned voice. “It was a
foolish proposal of mine. Lieutenant Hale,” and even this giving him the
title of the service from which he had so harshly been expelled, was
soothing to Margaret. “Lieutenant Hale is happy now; more secure in
fortune and future prospects than he could ever have been in the navy;
and has, doubtless, adopted his wife’s country as his own.”
“That is it,” said Margaret. “It seems so selfish in me to regret it,”
trying to smile, “and yet he is lost to me, and I am so lonely.” Mr.
Lennox turned over his papers, and wished that he were as rich and
prosperous as he believed he should be some day. Mr. Bell blew his nose,
but, otherwise, he also kept silence; and Margaret, in a minute or two,
had apparently recovered her usual composure. She thanked Mr. Lennox
very courteously for his trouble; all the more courteously and
graciously because she was conscious that, by her behaviour, he might
probably be led to imagine that he had given her needless pain. Yet it
was pain she would not have been without.
Mr. Bell came up to wish her good-bye.
“Margaret!” said he, as he fumbled with his gloves, “I am going down to
Helstone to-morrow, to look at the old place. Would you like to come
with me? Or would it give you too much pain? Speak out, don’t be
afraid.”
“Oh, Mr. Bell,” said she—and could say no more. But she took his old
gouty hand, and kissed it.
“Come, come; that’s enough,” said he, reddening with awkwardness. “I
suppose your aunt Shaw will trust you with me. We’ll go to-morrow
morning, and we shall get there about two o’clock, I fancy. We’ll take a
snack, and order dinner at the little inn—the Lennard Arms, it used to
be—and go and get an appetite in the forest. Can you stand it,
Margaret? It will be a trial, I know, to both of us, but it will be a
pleasure to me, at least. And there we’ll dine—it will be but
doe-venison, if we can get it at all—and then I’ll take my nap, while
you go out and see old friends. I’ll give you back safe and sound,
barring railway accidents, and I’ll insure your life for a thousand
pounds before starting, which may be some comfort to your relations; but
otherwise, I’ll bring you back to Mrs. Shaw by lunch time on Friday. So,
if you say yes, I’ll just go upstairs and propose it.”
“It’s no use my trying to say how much I shall like it,” said Margaret,
through her tears.
“Well, then, prove your gratitude by keeping those fountains of yours
dry for the next two days. If you don’t, I shall feel queer myself about
the lachrymal ducts, and I don’t like that.”
“I won’t cry a drop,” said Margaret, winking her eyes to shake the tears
off her eyelashes, and forcing a smile.
“There’s my good girl. Then we’ll go upstairs and settle it all.”
Margaret was in a state of almost trembling eagerness, while Mr. Bell
discussed his plan with her aunt Shaw, who was first startled, then
doubtful and perplexed, and in the end, yielding rather to the rough
force of Mr. Bell’s words than to her own conviction; for to the last,
whether it was right or wrong, proper or improper, she could not settle
to her own satisfaction, till Margaret’s safe return, the happy
fulfilment of the project, gave her decision enough to say, “she was
sure it had been a very kind thought of Mr. Bell’s, and just what she
herself had been wishing for Margaret, as giving her the very change
which she required, after all the anxious time she had had.”
CHAPTER XLVI.
ONCE AND NOW.
“So on those happy days of yore
Oft as I dare to dwell once more,
Still must I miss the friends so tried,
Whom Death has severed from my side.
But ever when true friendship binds,
Spirit it is that spirit finds;
In spirit then our bliss we found,
In spirit yet to them I’m bound.”
UHLAND.
Margaret was ready long before the appointed time, and had leisure
enough to cry a little, quietly, when unobserved, and to smile brightly
when any one looked at her. Her last alarm was lest they should be too
late and miss the train; but no! they were all in time; and she breathed
freely and happily at length, seated in the carriage opposite to Mr.
Bell, and whirling away past the well-known stations; seeing the old
south country-towns and hamlets sleeping in the warm light of the pure
sun, which gave a yet ruddier colour to their tiled roofs, so different
to the cold slates of the north. Broods of pigeons hovered around these
peaked quaint gables, slowly settling here and there, and ruffling their
soft, shiny feathers, as if exposing every fibre to the delicious
warmth. There were few people about at the stations, it almost seemed as
if they were too lazily content to wish to travel; none of the bustle
and stir that Margaret had noticed in her two journeys on the London and
North-Western line. Later on in the year, this line of railway should be
stirring and alive with rich pleasure-seekers; but as to the constant
going to and fro of busy tradespeople it would always be widely
different from the northern lines. Here a spectator or two stood
lounging at nearly every station, with his hands in his pockets, so
absorbed in the simple act of watching, that it made the travellers
wonder what he could find to do when the train whirled away, and only
the blank of a railway, some sheds, and a distant field or two were left
for him to gaze upon. The hot air danced over the golden stillness of
the land, farm after farm was left behind, each reminding Margaret of
German Idylls—of Herman and Dorothea—of Evangeline. From this waking
dream she was roused. It was the place to leave the train and take the
fly to Helstone. And now sharper feelings came shooting through her
heart, whether pain or pleasure she could hardly tell. Every mile was
redolent of associations, which she would not have missed for the
world, but each of which made her cry upon “the days that are no more,”
with ineffable longing. The last time she had passed along this road was
when she had left it with her father and mother—the day, the season,
had been gloomy, and she herself hopeless, but they were there with her.
Now she was alone, an orphan, and they, strangely, had gone away from
her, and vanished from the face of the earth. It hurt her to see the
Helstone road so flooded in the sunlight, and every turn and every
familiar tree so precisely the same in its summer glory as it had been
in former years. Nature felt no change and was ever young.
Mr. Bell knew something of what would be passing through her mind, and
wisely and kindly held his tongue. They drove up to the Lennard Arms;
half farm-house, half-inn, standing a little apart from the road, as
much as to say, that the host did not so depend on the custom of
travellers, as to have to court it by any obtrusiveness; they, rather,
must seek him out. The house fronted the village green; and right before
it stood an immemorial lime-tree benched all round, in some hidden
recesses of whose leafy wealth hung the grim escutcheon of the Lennards.
The door of the inn stood wide open, but there was no hospitable hurry
to receive the travellers. When the landlady did appear—and they might
have abstracted many an article first—she gave them a kind welcome,
almost as if they had been invited guests, and apologised for her coming
having been so delayed, by saying, that it was hay-time, and the
provisions for the men had to be sent a-field, and she had been too busy
packing up the baskets to hear the noise of wheels over the road, which,
since they left the highway, ran over soft short turf.
“Why, bless me!” exclaimed she, as at the end of her apology a glint of
sunshine showed her Margaret’s face, hitherto unobserved in that shady
parlour. “It’s Miss Hale, Jenny,” said she, running to the door, and
calling to her daughter. “Come here, come directly, it’s Miss Hale!” And
then she went up to Margaret, and shook hands with motherly fondness.
“And how are you all? How’s the Vicar and Miss Dixon? The Vicar above
all! God bless him! We’ve never ceased to be sorry that he left.”
Margaret tried to speak and tell her of her father’s death; of her
mother’s it was evident that Mrs. Purkis was aware, from her omission of
her name. But she choked in the effort, and could only touch her deep
mourning, and say the one word, “Papa.”
“Surely, sir, it’s never so!” said Mrs. Purkis, turning to Mr. Bell for
confirmation of the sad suspicion that now entered her mind. “There was
a gentleman here in the spring—might have been as long ago as last
winter—who told us a deal of Mr. Hale and Miss Margaret; and he said
Mrs. Hale was gone, poor lady. But never a word of the Vicar’s being
ailing!”
“It is so, however,” said Mr. Bell. “He died quite suddenly, when on a
visit to me at Oxford. He was a good man, Mrs. Purkis, and there’s many
of us that might be thankful to have as calm an end as his. Come,
Margaret, my dear! Her father was my oldest friend, and she’s my
god-daughter, so I thought we would just come down together and see the
old place; and I know of old you can give us comfortable rooms and a
capital dinner. You don’t remember me I see, but my name is Bell, and
once or twice when the parsonage has been full, I’ve slept here, and
tasted your good ale.”
“To be sure; I ask your pardon; but you see I was taken up with Miss
Hale. Let me show you to a room, Miss Margaret, where you can take off
your bonnet, and wash your face. It’s only this very morning I plunged
some fresh-gathered roses head downward in the water-jug, for thought I,
perhaps some one will be coming, and there’s nothing so sweet as
spring-water scented by a musk rose or two. To think of the Vicar being
dead! Well, to be sure, we must all die; only that gentleman said, he
was quite picking up after his trouble about Mrs. Hale’s death.”
“Come down to me, Mrs. Purkis, after you have attended to Miss Hale. I
want to have a consultation with you about dinner.”
The little casement window in Margaret’s bed-chamber was almost filled
up with rose and vine branches; but, pushing them aside, and stretching
a little out, she could see the tops of the parsonage chimneys above the
trees, and distinguish many a well-known line through the leaves.
“Aye!” said Mrs. Purkis, smoothing down the bed, and despatching Jenny
for an armful of lavender-scented towels, “times is changed, miss; our
new Vicar has seven children, and is building a nursery ready for more,
just where the arbour and tool-house used to be in old times. And he has
had new grates put in, and a plate-glass window in the drawing-room. He
and his wife are stirring people, and have done a deal of good; at least
they say it’s doing good; if it were not, I should call it turning
things upside down for very little purpose. The new Vicar is a
teetotaller, miss, and a magistrate, and his wife has a deal of receipts
for economical cooking, and is for making bread without yeast; and they
both talk so much, and both at a time, that they knock one down as it