“THE MORE HASTE THE WORSE SPEED.”
“Learn to win a lady’s faith
Nobly, as the thing is high;
Bravely, as for life and death—
With a loyal gravity.
Lead her from the festive boards,
Point her to the starry skies,
Guard her, by your truthful words,
Pure from courtship’s flatteries.”
MRS. BROWNING.
“Mr. Henry Lennox.” Margaret had been thinking of him only a moment
before, and remembering his inquiry into her probable occupations at
home. It was “parler du soleil et l’on en voit les rayons”; and the
brightness of the sun came over Margaret’s face as she put down her
board, and went forward to shake hands with him. “Tell mamma, Sarah,”
said she. “Mamma and I want to ask you so many questions about Edith; I
am so much obliged to you for coming.”
“Did not I say that I should?” asked he, in a lower tone than that in
which he had spoken.
“But I heard of you so far away in the Highlands that I never thought
Hampshire could come in.”
“Oh!” said he, more lightly, “our young couple were playing such foolish
pranks, running all sorts of risks, climbing this mountain, sailing on
that lake, that I really thought they needed a Mentor to take care of
them. And indeed they did: they were quite beyond my uncle’s management,
and kept the old gentleman in a panic for sixteen hours out of the
twenty-four. Indeed, when I once saw how unfit they were to be trusted
alone, I thought it my duty not to leave them till I had seen them
safely embarked at Plymouth.”
“Have you been at Plymouth? Oh! Edith never named that. To be sure, she
has written in such a hurry lately. Did they really sail on Tuesday?”
“Really sailed, and relieved me from many responsibilities. Edith gave
me all sorts of messages for you. I believe I have a little diminutive
note somewhere; yes, here it is.”
“Oh! thank you,” exclaimed Margaret; and then, half wishing to read it
alone and unwatched, she made the excuse of going to tell her mother
again (Sarah surely had made some mistake) that Mr. Lennox was there.
When she had left the room, he began in his scrutinising way to look
about him. The little drawing-room was looking its best in the streaming
light of the morning sun. The middle window in the bow was opened, and
clustering roses and the scarlet honeysuckle came peeping round the
corner; the small lawn was gorgeous with verbenas and geraniums of all
bright colours. But the very brightness outside made the colours within
seem poor and faded. The carpet was far from new; the chintz had been
often washed; the whole apartment was smaller and shabbier than he had
expected, as back-ground and frame-work for Margaret, herself so
queenly. He took up one of the books lying on the table; it was the
Paradise of Dante, in the proper old Italian binding of white vellum and
gold; by it lay a dictionary, and some words copied out in Margaret’s
handwriting. They were a dull list of words, but somehow he liked
looking at them. He put them down with a sigh.
“The living is evidently as small as she said. It seems strange, for the
Beresfords belong to a good family.”
Margaret meanwhile had found her mother. It was one of Mrs. Hale’s
fitful days, when everything was a difficulty and a hardship: and Mr.
Lennox’s appearance took this shape, although secretly she felt
complimented by his thinking it worth while to call.
“It is most unfortunate! We are dining early to-day, and having nothing
but cold meat, in order that the servants may get on with their ironing;
and yet, of course, we must ask him to dinner—Edith’s brother-in-law
and all. And your papa is in such low spirits this morning about
something—I don’t know what. I went into the study just now, and he had
his face on the table, covering it with his hands. I told him I was sure
Helstone air did not agree with him any more than with me, and he
suddenly lifted up his head, and begged me not to speak a word more
against Helstone, he could not bear it; if there was one place he loved
on earth it was Helstone. But I am sure, for all that, it is the damp
and relaxing air.”
Margaret felt as if a thin cold cloud had come between her and the sun.
She had listened patiently, in hopes that it might be some relief to her
mother to unburden herself; but now it was time to draw her back to Mr.
Lennox.
“Papa likes Mr. Lennox; they got on together famously at the wedding
breakfast. I daresay his coming will do papa good. And never mind the
dinner, dear mamma. Cold meat will do capitally for a lunch, which is
the light in which Mr. Lennox will most likely look upon a two o’clock
dinner.”
“But what are we to do with him till then? It is only half-past ten
now.”
“I’ll ask him to go out sketching with me. I know he draws, and that
will take him out of your way, mamma. Only do come in now; he will think
it so strange if you don’t.”
Mrs. Hale took off her black silk apron, and smoothed her face. She
looked a very pretty lady-like woman, as she greeted Mr. Lennox with the
cordiality due to one who was almost a relation. He evidently expected
to be asked to spend the day, and accepted the invitation with a glad
readiness that made Mrs. Hale wish she could add something to the cold
beef. He was pleased with everything; delighted with Margaret’s idea of
going out sketching together; would not have Mr. Hale disturbed for the
world, with the prospect of so soon meeting him at dinner. Margaret
brought out her drawing materials for him to choose from; and after the
paper and brushes had been duly selected, the two set out in the
merriest spirits in the world.
“Now, please, just stop here for a minute or two,” said Margaret. “These
are the cottages that haunted me so during the rainy fortnight,
reproaching me for not having sketched them.”
“Before they tumbled down and were no more seen. Truly, if they are to
be sketched—and they are very picturesque—we had better not put it off
till next year. But where shall we sit?”
“Oh! You might have come straight from chambers in the Temple, instead
of having been two months in the Highlands! Look at this beautiful trunk
of a tree, which the woodcutters have left just in the right place for
the light. I will put my plaid over it, and it will be a regular forest
throne.”
“With your feet in that puddle for a regal footstool! Stay, I will move,
and then you can come nearer this way. Who lives in these cottages?”
“They were built by squatters fifty or sixty years ago. One is
uninhabited; the foresters are going to take it down, as soon as the
other is dead, poor old fellow! Look—there he is—I must go and speak
to him. He is so deaf you will hear all our secrets.”
The old man stood bareheaded in the sun, leaning on his stick at the
front of his cottage. His stiff features relaxed into a slow smile as
Margaret went up and spoke to him. Mr. Lennox hastily introduced the two
figures into his sketch, and finished up the landscape with a
subordinate reference to them—as Margaret perceived, when the time came
for getting up, putting away water, and scraps of paper, and exhibiting
to each other their sketches. She laughed and blushed: Mr. Lennox
watched her countenance.
“Now, I call that treacherous,” said she. “I little thought that you
were making old Isaac and me into subjects, when you told me to ask him
the history of these cottages.”
“It was irresistible. You can’t know how strong a temptation it was. I
hardly dare tell you how much I shall like this sketch.”
He was not quite sure whether she heard this latter sentence before she
went to the brook to wash her palette. She came back rather flushed, but
looking perfectly innocent and unconscious. He was glad of it, for the
speech had slipped from him unawares—a rare thing in the case of a man
who premeditated his actions so much as Henry Lennox.
The aspect of home was all right and bright when they reached it. The
clouds on her mother’s brow had cleared off under the propitious
influence of a brace of carp, most opportunely presented by a neighbour.
Mr. Hale had returned from his morning’s round, and was awaiting his
visitor just outside the wicket gate that led into the garden. He looked
a complete gentleman in his rather threadbare coat and well-worn hat.
Margaret was proud of her father; she had always a fresh and tender
pride in seeing how favourably he impressed every stranger; still her
quick eye sought over his face and found there traces of some unusual
disturbance, which was only put aside, not cleared away.
Mr. Hale asked to look at their sketches.
“I think you have made the tints on the thatch too dark, have you not?”
as he returned Margaret’s to her, and held out his hand for Mr.
Lennox’s, which was withheld from him one moment, no more.
“No, papa! I don’t think I have. The house-leek and stone-crop have
grown so much darker in the rain. Is it not like, papa?” said she,
peeping over his shoulder, as he looked at the figures in Mr. Lennox’s
drawing.
“Yes, very like. Your figure and way of holding yourself is capital. And
it is just poor old Isaac’s stiff way of stooping his long rheumatic
back. What is this hanging from the branch of the tree? Not a bird’s
nest, surely.”
“Oh no! that is my bonnet. I never can draw with my bonnet on; it makes
my head so hot. I wonder if I could manage figures. There are so many
people about here whom I should like to sketch.”
“I should say that a likeness you very much wish to take you would
always succeed in,” said Mr. Lennox. “I have great faith in the power of
will. I think myself I have succeeded pretty well in yours.” Mr. Hale
had preceded them into the house, while Margaret was lingering to pluck
some roses, with which to adorn her morning gown for dinner.
“A regular London girl would understand the implied meaning of that
speech,” thought Mr. Lennox. “She would be up to looking through every
speech that a young man made her for the _arrière-pensée_ of a compliment.
But I don’t believe Margaret,—Stay!” exclaimed he, “Let me help you”;
and he gathered for her some velvety cramoisy roses that were above her
reach, and then dividing the spoil he placed two in his button-hole, and
sent her in, pleased and happy, to arrange her flowers.
The conversation at dinner flowed on quietly and agreeably. There were
plenty of questions to be asked on both sides—the latest intelligence
which each could give of Mrs. Shaw’s movements in Italy to be exchanged;
and in the interest of what was said, the unpretending simplicity of the
parsonage-ways—above all in the neighbourhood of Margaret, Mr. Lennox
forgot the little feeling of disappointment with which he had at first
perceived that she had spoken but the simple truth when she had
described her father’s living as very small.
“Margaret, my child, you might have gathered us some pears for our
dessert,” said Mr. Hale, as the hospitable luxury of a freshly-decanted
bottle of wine was placed on the table.
Mrs. Hale was hurried. It seemed as if desserts were impromptu and
unusual things at the parsonage; whereas, if Mr. Hale would only have
looked behind him, he would have seen biscuits and marmalade, and what
not, all arranged in formal order on the side-board. But the idea of
pears had taken possession of Mr. Hale’s mind, and was not to be got rid
of.
“There are a few brown beurrés against the south wall which are worth
all foreign fruits and preserves. Run, Margaret, and gather some.”
“I propose that we adjourn into the garden, and eat them there,” said
Mr. Lennox. “Nothing is so delicious as to set one’s teeth into the
crisp, juicy fruit, warm and scented by the sun. The worst is, the wasps
are impudent enough to dispute it with one, even at the very crisis and
summit of enjoyment.”
He rose, as if to follow Margaret, who had disappeared through the
window: he only awaited Mrs. Hale’s permission. She would rather have
wound up the dinner in the proper way, and with all the ceremonies which
had gone on so smoothly hitherto, especially as she and Dixon had got
out the finger-glasses from the store-room on purpose to be as correct
as became General Shaw’s widow’s sister; but as Mr. Hale got up
directly, and prepared to accompany his guest, she could only submit.
“I shall arm myself with a knife,” said Mr. Hale: “the days of eating
fruit so primitively as you describe are over with me. I must pare it
and quarter it before I can enjoy it.”
Margaret made a plate for the pears out of a beet-root leaf, which threw
up their brown gold colour admirably. Mr. Lennox looked more at her than
at the pears; but her father, inclined to cull fastidiously the very
zest and perfection of the hour he had stolen from his anxiety, chose
daintily the ripest fruit, and sat down on the garden bench to enjoy it
at his leisure. Margaret and Mr. Lennox strolled along the little
terrace-walk under the south wall, where the bees still hummed and
worked busily in their hives.
“What a perfect life you seem to live here! I have always felt rather
contemptuously towards the poets before, with their wishes, ‘Mine be a
cot beside a hill,’ and that sort of thing; but now I am afraid that the
truth is, I have been nothing better than a Cockney. Just now I feel as
if twenty years’ hard study of law would be amply rewarded by one year
of such an exquisite serene life as this—such skies!” looking up—“such
crimson and amber foliage, so perfectly motionless as that!” pointing to
some of the great forest trees which shut in the garden as if it were a
nest.
“You must please to remember that our skies are not always as deep a
blue as they are now. We have rain, and our leaves do fall, and get
sodden: though I think Helstone is about as perfect a place as any in
the world. Recollect how you rather scorned my description of it one
evening in Harley Street: ‘a village in a tale.’”
“Scorned, Margaret! That is rather a hard word.”
“Perhaps it is. Only I know I should have liked to have talked to you of
what I was very full at the time, and you—what must I call it
then?—spoke disrespectfully of Helstone as a mere village in a tale.”
“I will never do so again,” said he, warmly. They turned the corner of
the walk.
“I could almost wish, Margaret——” he stopped and hesitated. It was so
unusual for the fluent lawyer to hesitate that Margaret looked up at
him, in a little state of questioning wonder; but in an instant—from
what about him she could not tell—she wished herself back with her
mother—her father—anywhere away from him, for she was sure he was
going to say something to which she should not know what to reply. In
another moment the strong pride that was in her came to conquer her
sudden agitation, which she hoped he had not perceived. Of course she
could answer, and answer the right thing; and it was poor and despicable
of her to shrink from hearing any speech, as if she had not power to put
an end to it with her high maidenly dignity.
“Margaret,” said he, taking her by surprise, and getting sudden
possession of her hand, so that she was forced to stand still and
listen, despising herself for the fluttering at her heart all the time;
“Margaret, I wish you did not like Helstone so much—did not seem so
perfectly calm and happy here. I have been hoping for these three months
past to find you regretting London—and London friends, a little—enough
to make you listen more kindly” (for she was quietly, but firmly,
striving to extricate her hand from his grasp) “to one who has not much
to offer, it is true—nothing but prospects in the future—but who does
love you, Margaret, almost in spite of himself. Margaret, have I
startled you too much? Speak!” For he saw her lips quivering almost as
if she were going to cry. She made a strong effort to be calm; she would
not speak till she had succeeded in mastering her voice, and then she
said:
“I was startled. I did not know that you cared for me in that way. I
have always thought of you as a friend; and, please, I would rather go
on thinking of you so. I don’t like to be spoken to as you have been
doing. I cannot answer you as you want me to do, and yet I should feel
so sorry if I vexed you.”
“Margaret,” said he, looking into her eyes, which met his with their
open, straight look, expressive of the utmost good faith and reluctance
to give pain, “Do you”—he was going to say—“love any one else?” But it
seemed as if this question would be an insult to the pure serenity of
those eyes. “Forgive me! I have been too abrupt. I am punished. Only let
me hope. Give me the poor comfort of telling me you have never seen any
one whom you could——” Again a pause. He could not end his sentence.
Margaret reproached herself acutely as the cause of his distress.
“Ah! if you had but never got this fancy into your head! It was such a
pleasure to think of you as a friend.”
“But I may hope, may I not, Margaret, that some time you will think of
me as a lover? Not yet, I see—there is no hurry—but some time——”
She was silent for a minute or two, trying to discover the truth as it
was in her own heart, before replying, then she said:
“I have never thought of—you, but as a friend. I like to think of you
so; but I am sure I could never think of you as anything else. Pray let
us both forget that all this” (“disagreeable,” she was going to say, but
stopped short) “conversation has taken place.”
He paused before he replied. Then, in his habitual coldness of tone, he
answered:
“Of course, as your feelings are so decided, and as this conversation
has been so evidently unpleasant to you, it had better not be
remembered. That is all very fine in theory, that plan of forgetting
whatever is painful, but it will be somewhat difficult for me, at least,
to carry it into execution.”
“You are vexed,” said she, sadly; “yet how can I help it?”
She looked so truly grieved as she said this, that he struggled for a
moment with his real disappointment, and then answered more cheerfully,
but still with a little hardness in his tone:
“You should make allowances for the mortification, not only of a lover,
Margaret, but of a man not given to romance in general—prudent,
worldly, as some people call me—who has been carried out of his usual
habits by the force of a passion—well, we will say no more of that; but
in the one outlet which he has formed for the deeper and better feelings
of his nature, he meets with rejection and repulse. I shall have to
console myself with scorning my own folly. A struggling barrister to
think of matrimony!”
Margaret could not answer this. The whole tone of it annoyed her. It
seemed to touch on and call out all the points of difference which had
often repelled her in him; while yet he was the pleasantest man, the
most sympathising friend, the person of all others who understood her
best in Harley Street. She felt a tinge of contempt mingle itself with
her pain at having refused him. Her beautiful lip curled in a slight
disdain. It was well that, having made the round of the garden, they
came suddenly upon Mr. Hale, whose whereabouts had been quite forgotten
by them. He had not yet finished the pear, which he had delicately
peeled in one long strip of silver-paper thinness, and which he was
enjoying in a deliberate manner. It was like the story of the eastern
king, who dipped his head into a basin of water, at the magician’s
command, and ere he instantly took it out went through the experience of
a lifetime. Margaret felt stunned, and unable to recover her
self-possession enough to join in the trivial conversation that ensued
between her father and Mr. Lennox. She was grave, and little disposed to
speak; full of wonder when Mr. Lennox would go, and allow her to relax
into thought on the events of the last quarter of an hour. He was almost
as anxious to take his departure as she was for him to leave; but a few
minutes light and careless talking, carried on at whatever effort, was a
sacrifice which he owed to his mortified vanity, or his self-respect. He
glanced from time to time at her sad and pensive face.
“I am not so indifferent to her as she believes,” thought he to himself.
“I do not give up hope.”
Before a quarter of an hour was over, he had fallen into a way of
conversing with quiet sarcasm; speaking of life in London and life in
the country, as if he were conscious of his second mocking self, and
afraid of his own satire. Mr. Hale was puzzled. His visitor was a
different man to what he had seen him before at the wedding-breakfast,
and at dinner to-day; a lighter, cleverer, more worldly man, and, as
such, dissonant to Mr. Hale. It was a relief to all three when Mr.
Lennox said that he must go directly if he meant to catch the five
o’clock train. They proceeded to the house to find Mrs. Hale, and wish
her good-bye. At the last moment, Henry Lennox’s real self broke through
the crust.
“Margaret, don’t despise me; I have a heart, notwithstanding all this
good-for-nothing way of talking. As a proof of it, I believe I love you
more than ever—if I do not hate you—for the disdain with which you
have listened to me during this last half-hour. Good-bye,
Margaret—Margaret!”