FAREWELL.
“Unwatch’d the garden bough shall sway,
The tender blossom flutter down,
Unloved that beech will gather brown,
The maple burn itself away;
Unloved, the sun-flower, shining fair,
Ray round with flames her disk of seed,
And many a rose-carnation feed
With summer spice the humming air;
* * * * *
Till from the garden and the wild
A fresh association blow
And year by year the landscape grow
Familiar to the stranger’s child;
As year by year the labourer tills
His wonted glebe, or lops the glades;
And year by year our memory fades
From all the circle of the hills.”
TENNYSON.
The last day came; the house was full of packing-cases, which were being
carted off at the front door, to the nearest railway station. Even the
pretty lawn at the side of the house, was made unsightly and untidy by
the straw that had been wafted upon it through the open door and
windows. The rooms had a strange echoing sound in them,—and the light
came harshly and strongly in through the uncurtained windows,—seeming
already unfamiliar and strange. Mrs. Hale’s dressing-room was left
untouched to the last; and there she and Dixon were packing up clothes,
and interrupting each other every now and then to exclaim at, and turn
over with fond regard, some forgotten treasure, in the shape of some
relic of the children while they were yet little. They did not make much
progress with their work. Down-stairs, Margaret stood calm and
collected, ready to counsel or advise the men who had been called in to
help the cook and Charlotte. These two last, crying between whiles,
wondered how the young lady could keep up so this last day, and settled
it between them that she was not likely to care much for Helstone,
having been so long in London. There she stood, very pale and quiet,
with her large grave eyes observing everything—up to every present
circumstance however small. They could not understand how her heart was
aching all the time, with a heavy pressure that no sighs could lift off
or relieve, and how constant exertion for her perceptive faculties was
the only way to keep herself from crying out with pain. Moreover, if she
gave way, who was to act? Her father was examining papers, books,
registers, what not, in the vestry with the clerk; and when he came in,
there were his own books to pack up, which no one but himself could do
to his satisfaction. Besides, was Margaret one to give way before
strange men, or even household friends like the cook and Charlotte? Not
she! But at last the four packers went into the kitchen to their tea;
and Margaret moved stiffly and slowly away from the place in the hall
where she had been standing so long, out through the bare echoing
drawing-room, into the twilight of an early November evening. There was
a filmy veil of soft dull mist obscuring, but not hiding, all objects,
giving them a lilac hue, for the sun had not yet fully set; a robin was
singing,—perhaps, Margaret thought, the very robin that her father had
so often talked of as his winter pet, and for which he had made, with
his own hands, a kind of robin-house by his study-window. The leaves
were more gorgeous than ever; the first touch of frost would lay them
all low on the ground. Already one or two kept constantly floating down,
amber and golden in the low slanting sun-rays.
Margaret went along the walk under the pear-tree wall. She had never
been along it since she paced it at Henry Lennox’s side. Here, at this
bed of thyme, he began to speak of what she must not think of now. Her
eyes were on that late-blowing rose as she was trying to answer; and she
had caught the idea of the vivid beauty of the feathery leaves of the
carrots in the very middle of his last sentence. Only a fortnight ago!
And all so changed! Where was he now? In London,—going through the old
round; dining with the old Harley Street set, or with gayer young
friends of his own. Even now, while she walked sadly through that damp
and drear garden in the dusk, with everything falling and fading, and
turning to decay around her, he might be gladly putting away his
law-books after a day of satisfactory toil, and freshening himself up,
as he had told her he often did, by a run in the Temple Gardens, taking
in the while the grand inarticulate mighty roar of tens of thousands of
busy men, nigh at hand, but not seen, and catching ever, at his quick
turns, glimpses of the lights of the city coming up out of the depths of
the river. He had often spoken to Margaret of these hasty walks,
snatched in the intervals between study and dinner. At his best times
and in his best moods had he spoken of them; and the thought of them had
struck upon her fancy. Here there was no sound. The robin had gone away
into the vast stillness of night. Now and then, a cottage door in the
distance was opened and shut, as if to admit the tired labourer to his
home; but that sounded very far away. A stealthy, creeping, cranching
sound among the crisp fallen leaves of the forest, beyond the garden,
seemed almost close at hand. Margaret knew it was some poacher. Sitting
up in her bedroom this past autumn, with the light of her candle
extinguished, and purely revelling in the solemn beauty of the heavens
and the earth, she had many a time seen the light noiseless leap of the
poachers over the garden-fence, their quick tramp across the dewy
moonlit lawn, their disappearance in the black still shadow beyond. The
wild adventurous freedom of their life had taken her fancy; she felt
inclined to wish them success; she had no fear of them. But to-night she
was afraid, she knew not why. She heard Charlotte shutting the windows,
and fastening up for the night, unconscious that any one had gone out
into the garden. A small branch—it might be of rotten wood, or it might
be broken by force—came heavily down in the nearest part of the forest;
Margaret ran, swift as Camilla, down to the window, and rapped at it
with a hurried tremulousness which startled Charlotte within.
“Let me in! Let me in! It is only me, Charlotte!” Her heart did not
still its fluttering till she was safe in the drawing-room, with the
windows fastened and bolted, and the familiar walls hemming her round,
and shutting her in. She had sate down upon a packing-case; cheerless,
chill was the dreary and dismantled room—no fire, nor other light, but
Charlotte’s long unsnuffed candle. Charlotte looked at Margaret with
surprise; and Margaret, feeling it rather than seeing it, rose up.
“I was afraid you were shutting me out altogether, Charlotte,” said she,
half-smiling. “And then you would never have heard me in the kitchen,
and the doors into the lane and churchyard are locked long ago.”
“Oh, miss, I should have been sure to have missed you soon. The men
would have wanted you to tell them how to go on. And I have put tea in
master’s study, as being the most comfortable room, so to speak.”
“Thank you, Charlotte. You are a kind girl. I shall be sorry to leave
you. You must try and write to me, if I can ever give you any little
help or good advice. I shall always be glad to get a letter from
Helstone, you know. I shall be sure and send you my address when I know
it.”
The study was all ready for tea. There was a good blazing fire, and
unlighted candles on the table. Margaret sat down on the rug, partly to
warm herself, for the dampness of the evening hung about her dress, and
over-fatigue had made her chilly. She kept herself balanced by clasping
her hands together round her knees; her head dropped a little towards
her chest; the attitude was one of despondency, whatever her frame of
mind might be. But when she heard her father’s step on the gravel
outside, she started up, and hastily shaking her heavy black hair back,
and wiping a few tears away that had come on her cheeks she knew not
how, she went out to open the door for him. He showed far more
depression than she did. She could hardly get him to talk, although she
tried to speak on subjects that would interest him, at the cost of an
effort every time which she thought would be her last.
“Have you been a very long walk to-day?” asked she, on seeing his
refusal to touch food of any kind.
“As far as Fordham Beeches. I went to see Widow Maltby; she is sadly
grieved at not having wished you good-bye. She says little Susan has
kept watch down the lane for days past.—Nay, Margaret, what is the
matter, dear?” The thought of the little child watching for her, and
continually disappointed—from no forgetfulness on her part, but from
sheer inability to leave home—was the last drop in poor Margaret’s cup,
and she was sobbing away as if her heart would break. Mr. Hale was
distressingly perplexed. He rose, and walked nervously up and down the
room. Margaret tried to check herself, but would not speak until she
could do so with firmness. She heard him talking, as if to himself.
“I cannot bear it. I cannot bear to see the sufferings of others. I
think I could go through my own with patience. Oh, is there no going
back?”
“No, father,” said Margaret, looking straight at him, and speaking low
and steadily. “It is bad to believe you in error. It would be infinitely
worse to have known you a hypocrite.” She dropped her voice at the last
few words, as if entertaining the idea of hypocrisy for a moment in
connection with her father savoured of irreverence.
“Besides,” she went on, “it is only that I am tired to-night; don’t
think that I am suffering from what you have done, dear papa. We can’t
either of us talk about it to-night, I believe,” said she, finding that
tears and sobs would come in spite of herself. “I had better go and take
mamma up this cup of tea. She had hers very early, when I was too busy
to go to her, and I am sure she will be glad of another now.”
Railroad time inexorably wrenched them away from lovely, beloved
Helstone, the next morning. They were gone; they had seen the last of
the long low parsonage home, half-covered with China-roses and
pyracanthus—more homelike than ever in the morning sun that glittered
on its windows, each belonging to some well-loved room. Almost before
they had settled themselves into the car, sent from Southampton to fetch
them to the station, they were gone away to return no more. A sting at
Margaret’s heart made her strive to look out to catch the last glimpse
of the old church tower at the turn where she knew it might be seen
above a wave of the forest trees; but her father remembered this too,
and she silently acknowledged his greater right to the one window from
which it could be seen. She leant back and shut her eyes, and the tears
welled forth, and hung glittering for an instant on the shadowing
eyelashes before rolling slowly down her cheeks, and dropping, unheeded,
on her dress.
They were to stop in London all night at some quiet hotel. Poor Mrs.
Hale had cried in her way nearly all day long; and Dixon showed her
sorrow by extreme crossness, and a continual irritable attempt to keep
her petticoats from even touching the unconscious Mr. Hale, whom she
regarded as the origin of all this suffering.
They went through the well-known streets, past houses which they had
often visited, past shops in which she had lounged, impatient, by her
aunt’s side, while that lady was making some important and interminable
decision—nay, absolutely passed acquaintances in the streets; for
though the morning had been of an incalculable length to them, and they
felt as if it ought long ago to have closed in for the repose of
darkness, it was the very busiest time of a London afternoon in November
when they arrived there. It was long since Mrs. Hale had been in London;
and she roused up, almost like a child, to look about her at the
different streets, and to gaze after and exclaim at the shops and
carriages,—
“Oh, there’s Harrison’s, where I bought so many of my wedding things.
Dear! how altered! They’ve got immense plate-glass windows, larger than
Crawford’s in Southampton. Oh, and there, I declare—no, it is not—yes,
it is—Margaret, we have just passed Mr. Henry Lennox. Where can he be
going, among all these shops?”
Margaret started forwards, and as quickly fell back, half-smiling at
herself for the sudden motion. They were a hundred yards away by this
time; but he seemed like a relic of Helstone—he was associated with a
bright morning, an eventful day, and she should have liked to have seen
him, without his seeing her,—without the chance of their speaking.
The evening, without employment, passed in a room high up in an hotel,
was long and heavy. Mr. Hale went out to his bookseller’s, and to call
on a friend or two. Every one they saw, either in the house or out in
the streets, appeared hurrying to some appointment, expected by, or
expecting somebody. They alone seemed strange and friendless, and
desolate. Yet within a mile, Margaret knew of house after house, where
she for her own sake, and her mother for her aunt Shaw’s, would be
welcomed, if they came in gladness, or even in peace of mind. If they
came sorrowing, and wanting sympathy in a complicated trouble like the
present, then they would be felt as a shadow in all these houses of
intimate acquaintances, not friends. London life is too whirling and
full to admit of even an hour of that deep silence of feeling which the
friends of Job showed, when “they sat with him on the ground seven days
and seven nights, and none spake a word unto him; for they saw that his
grief was very great.”