North and South
acutely—you know you are not strong, and there must have been such
terrible suspense to go through.”
“When did he tell you, Margaret?”
“Yesterday, only yesterday,” replied Margaret, detecting the jealousy
which prompted the inquiry. “Poor papa!”—trying to divert her mother’s
thoughts into compassionate sympathy for all her father had gone
through. Mrs. Hale raised her head.
“What does he mean by having doubts?” she asked. “Surely, he does not
mean that he thinks differently—that he knows better than the Church.”
Margaret shook her head, and the tears came into her eyes, as her mother
touched the bare nerve of her own regret.
“Can’t the bishop set him right?” asked Mrs. Hale half impatiently.
“I’m afraid not,” said Margaret. “But I did not ask. I could not bear to
hear what he might answer. It is all settled at any rate. He is going to
leave Helstone in a fortnight. I am not sure if he did not say he had
sent in his deed of resignation.”
“In a fortnight!” exclaimed Mrs. Hale, “I do think this is very
strange—not at all right. I call it very unfeeling,” said she,
beginning to take relief in tears. “He has doubts you say, and gives up
his living, and all without consulting me. I dare say, if he had told me
his doubts at the first I could have nipped them in the bud.”
Mistaken as Margaret felt her father’s conduct to have been, she could
not bear to hear it blamed by her mother. She knew that his very
reserve had originated in a tenderness for her, which might be cowardly,
but was not unfeeling.
“I almost hoped you might be glad to leave Helstone, mamma,” said she,
after a pause. “You have never been well in this air, you know.”
“You can’t think the smoky air of a manufacturing town, all chimneys and
dirt like Milton-Northern, would be better than this air, which is pure
and sweet, if it is too soft and relaxing. Fancy living in the middle of
factories, and factory people! Though, of course, if your father leaves
the Church, we shall not be admitted into society anywhere. It will be
such a disgrace to us! Poor dear Sir John! It is well he is not alive to
see what your father has come to! Every day after dinner, when I was a
girl, living with your Aunt Shaw, at Beresford Court, Sir John used to
give for the first toast—‘Church and King, and down with the Rump.’”
Margaret was glad that her mother’s thoughts were turned away from the
fact of her husband’s silence to her on the point which must have been
so near his heart. Next to the serious vital anxiety as to the nature of
her father’s doubts, this was the one circumstance of the case that gave
Margaret the most pain.
“You know, we have very little society here, mamma. The Gormans, who are
our nearest neighbours (to call society—and we hardly ever see them),
have been in trade just as much as these Milton-Northern people.”
“Yes,” says Mrs. Hale, almost indignantly, “but at any rate, the Gormans
made carriages for half the gentlemen of the county, and were brought
into some kind of intercourse with them; but these factory people, who
on earth wears cotton that can afford linen?”
“Well, mamma, I give up the cotton-spinners; I am not standing up for
them, any more than for any other trades-people. Only we shall have
little enough to do with them.”
“Why on earth has your father fixed on Milton-Northern to live in?”
“Partly,” said Margaret, sighing, “because it is so very different from
Helstone—partly because Mr. Bell says there is an opening there for a
private tutor.”
“Private tutor in Milton! Why can’t he go to Oxford, and be a tutor to
gentlemen?”
“You forget, mamma! He is leaving the Church on account of his
opinions—his doubts would do him no good at Oxford.”
Mrs. Hale was silent for some time, quietly crying. At last she said:—
“And the furniture—How in the world are we to manage the removal? I
never removed in my life, and only a fortnight to think about it!”
Margaret was inexpressibly relieved to find that her mother’s anxiety
and distress was lowered to this point, so insignificant to herself, and
on which she could do so much to help. She planned and promised, and led
her mother on to arrange fully as much as could be fixed before they
knew somewhat more definitely what Mr. Hale intended to do. Throughout
the day Margaret never left her mother; bending her whole soul to
sympathise in all the various turns her feelings took; towards evening
especially, as she became more and more anxious that her father should
find a soothing welcome home awaiting him, after his return from his day
of fatigue and distress. She dwelt upon what he must have borne in
secret for long; her mother only replied coldly that he ought to have
told her, and that then at any rate he would have had an adviser to give
him counsel; and Margaret turned faint at heart when she heard her
father’s step in the hall. She dared not go to meet him, and tell him
what she had done all day, for fear of her mother’s jealous annoyance.
She heard him linger, as if awaiting her, or some sign of her; and she
dared not stir; she saw by her mother’s twitching lips, and changing
colour, that she too was aware that her husband had returned. Presently
he opened the room-door, and stood there uncertain whether to come in.
His face was gray and pale; he had a timid fearful look in his eyes;
something almost pitiful to see in a man’s face; but that look of
despondent uncertainty, of mental and bodily languor, touched his wife’s
heart. She went to him, and threw herself on his breast, crying out:—
“Oh! Richard, Richard, you should have told me sooner!”
And then, in tears, Margaret left her, as she rushed up stairs to throw
herself on her bed, and hide her face in the pillows to stifle the
hysteric sobs that would force their way out at last, after the rigid
self-control of the whole day.
How long she lay thus she could not tell. She heard no noise, though the
housemaid came in to arrange the room. The affrighted girl stole out
again on tip-toe, and went and told Mrs. Dixon that Miss Hale was crying
as if her heart would break: she was sure she would make herself deadly
ill if she went on at that rate. In consequence of this, Margaret felt
herself touched, and started up into a sitting posture; she saw the
accustomed room, the figure of Dixon in shadow, as the latter stood
holding a candle a little behind her, for fear of the effect on Miss
Hale’s startled eyes, swollen and blinded as they were.
“Oh, Dixon! I did not hear you come into the room!” said Margaret,
resuming her trembling self-restraint. “Is it very late?” continued she,
lifting herself languidly off the bed, yet letting her feet touch the
ground without fairly standing down, as she shaded her wet ruffled hair
off her face, and tried to look as though nothing were the matter; as if
she had been asleep.
“I can hardly tell what time it is,” replied Dixon in an aggrieved tone
of voice. “Since your mamma told me this terrible news, when I dressed
her for tea, I’ve lost all count of time. I’m sure I don’t know what is
to become of us all. When Charlotte told me just now you were sobbing,
Miss Hale, I thought, no wonder, poor thing! And master thinking of
turning Dissenter at his time of life, when, if it is not to be said
he’s done well in the Church, he’s not done badly after all. I had a
cousin, miss, who turned Methodist preacher after he was fifty years of
age, and a tailor all his life; but then he had never been able to make
a pair of trousers to fit, for as long as he had been in the trade, so
it was no wonder; but for master! as I said to missus, ‘What would poor
Sir John have said? he never liked your marrying Mr. Hale, but if he
could have known it would have come to this, he would have sworn worse
oaths than ever, if that was possible!’”
Dixon had been so much accustomed to comment upon Mr. Hale’s proceedings
to her mistress (who listened to her, or not, as she was in the humour),
that she never noticed Margaret’s flashing eye and dilating nostril. To
hear her father talked of in this way by a servant to her face!
“Dixon,” she said, in the low tone she always used when much excited,
which had a sound in it as of some distant turmoil, or threatening storm
breaking far away. “Dixon! you forget to whom you are speaking.” She
stood upright and firm on her feet now, confronting the waiting-maid,
and fixing her with her steady discerning eye. “I am Mr. Hale’s
daughter. Go! You have made a strange mistake, and one that I am sure
your own good feeling will make you sorry for when you think about it.”
Dixon hung irresolutely about the room for a minute or two. Margaret
repeated, “You may leave me, Dixon. I wish you to go.” Dixon did not
know whether to resent these decided words or to cry; either course
would have suited her mistress: but as she said to herself, “Miss
Margaret has a touch of the old gentleman about her, as well as poor
Master Frederick; I wonder where they get it from?” and she, who would
have resented such words from any one less haughty and determined in
manner, was subdued enough to say, in a half humble, half injured tone:
“Mayn’t I unfasten your gown, miss, and do your hair?”
“No! not to-night, thank you.” And Margaret gravely lighted her out of
the room, and bolted the door. From henceforth Dixon obeyed and admired
Margaret. She said it was because she was so like poor Master Frederick;
but the truth was, that Dixon, as do many others, liked to feel herself
ruled by a powerful and decided nature.
Margaret needed all Dixon’s help in action, and silence in words; for,
for some time, the latter thought it her duty to show her sense of
affront by saying as little as possible to her young lady; so the energy
came out in doing rather than in speaking. A fortnight was a very short
time to make arrangements for so serious a removal; as Dixon said,
“Anyone but a gentleman—indeed almost any other gentleman—” but
catching a look at Margaret’s straight, stern brow just here, she
coughed the remainder of the sentence away, and meekly took the
horehound drop that Margaret offered her, to stop the “little tickling
at my chest, miss.” But almost any one but Mr. Hale would have had
practical knowledge enough to see, that in so short a time it would be
difficult to fix on any house in Milton-Northern, or indeed elsewhere,
to which they could remove the furniture that had of necessity been
taken out of Helstone Vicarage.
Mrs. Hale, overpowered by all the troubles and necessities for
immediate household decisions that seemed to come upon her at once,
became really ill, and Margaret almost felt it as a relief when her
mother fairly took to her bed, and left the management of affairs to
her. Dixon, true to her post of body-guard, attended most faithfully to
her mistress, and only emerged from Mrs. Hale’s bedroom to shake her
head, and murmur to herself in a manner which Margaret did not choose to
hear. For, the one thing clear and straight before her, was the
necessity for leaving Helstone. Mr. Hale’s successor in the living was
appointed; and, at any rate, after her father’s decision, there must be
no lingering now, for his sake, as well as from every other
consideration. For he came home every evening more and more depressed,
after the necessary leave-taking which he had resolved to have with
every individual parishioner. Margaret, inexperienced as she was in all
the necessary matter-of-fact business to be got through, did not know to
whom to apply for advice. The cook and Charlotte worked away with
willing arms and stout hearts at all the moving and packing; and as far
as that went, Margaret’s admirable sense enabled her to see what was
best, and to direct how it should be done. But where were they to go to?
In a week they must be gone. Straight to Milton, or where? So many