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
were, and it’s not till they’re gone, and one’s a little at peace, that
one can think that there were things one might have said on one’s own
side of the question. He’ll be after the men’s cans in the hay-field,
and peeping in; and then there’ll be an ado because it’s not
ginger-beer, but I can’t help it. My mother and my grandmother before me
sent good malt liquor to hay-makers, and took salts and senna when
anything ailed them; and I must e’en go on in their ways, though Mrs.
Hepworth does want to give me comfits instead of medicine, which, as she
says, is a deal pleasanter, only I’ve no faith in it. But I must go,
miss, though I’m wanting to hear many a thing; I’ll come back to you
before long.”
Mr. Bell had strawberries and cream, a loaf of brown bread, and a jug of
milk (together with a Stilton cheese and a bottle of port for his own
private refreshment), ready for Margaret on her coming down stairs; and
after this rustic luncheon they set out for a walk, hardly knowing in
what direction to turn, so many old familiar inducements were there in
each.
“Shall we go past the vicarage?” asked Mr. Bell.
“No, not yet. We will go this way, and make a round so as to come back
by it,” said Margaret.
Here and there old trees had been felled the autumn before; or a
squatter’s cottage roughly-built and decaying cottage had disappeared.
Margaret missed them each and all, and grieved over them like old
friends. They came past the spot where she and Mr. Lennox had sketched.
The white, lightning-scarred trunk of the venerable beech, among whose
roots they had sate down was there no more; the old man, the inhabitant
of the ruinous cottage, was dead; the cottage had been pulled down, and
a new one, tidy and respectable, had been built in its stead. There was
a small garden on the place where the beech-tree had been.
“I did not think I had been so old,” said Margaret after a pause of
silence; and she turned away sighing.
“Yes!” said Mr. Bell. “It is the first changes among familiar things
that make such a mystery of time to the young, afterwards we lose the
sense of the mysterious. I take changes in all I see as a matter of
course. The instability of all human things is familiar to me, to you it
is new and oppressive.”
“Let us go on to see little Susan,” said Margaret, drawing her companion
up a grassy road-way, leading under the shadow of a forest glade.
“With all my heart, though I have not an idea who little Susan may be.
But I have a kindness for all Susans, for simple Susan’s sake.”
“My little Susan was disappointed when I left without wishing her
good-bye; and it has been on my conscience ever since, that I gave her
pain which a little more exertion on my part might have prevented. But
it is a long way. Are you sure you will not be tired?”
“Quite sure. That is, if you don’t walk so fast. You see, here there are
no views that can give one an excuse for stopping to take breath. You
would think it romantic to be walking with a person ‘fat and scant o’
breath’ if I were Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Have compassion on my
infirmities for his sake.”
“I will walk slower for your own sake. I like you twenty times better
than Hamlet.”
“On the principle that a living ass is better than a dead lion?”
“Perhaps so. I don’t analyse my feelings.”
“I am content to take your liking me, without examining too curiously
into the materials it is made of. Only we need not walk at a snail’s
pace.”
“Very well. Walk at your own pace, and I will follow. Or stop still and
meditate, like the Hamlet you compare yourself to, if I go too fast.”
“Thank you. But as my mother has not murdered my father, and afterwards
married my uncle, I shouldn’t know what to think about, unless it were
balancing the chances of our having a well-cooked dinner or not. What do
you think?”
“I am in good hopes. She used to be considered a famous cook as far as
Helstone opinion went.”
“But have you considered the distraction of mind produced by all this
haymaking?”
Margaret felt all Mr. Bell’s kindness in trying to make cheerful talk
about nothing, to endeavour to prevent her from thinking too curiously
about the past. But she would rather have gone over these dear-loved
walks in silence, if indeed she were not ungrateful enough to wish that
she might have been alone.
They reached the cottage where Susan’s widowed mother lived. Susan was
not there. She was gone to the parochial school. Margaret was
disappointed, and the poor woman saw it, and began to make a kind of
apology.
“Oh! it is quite right,” said Margaret. “I am very glad to hear it. I
might have thought of it. Only she used to stop at home with you.”
“Yes, she did; and I miss her sadly. I used to teach her what little I
knew at nights. It were not much to be sure. But she were getting such a
handy girl, that I miss her sore. But she’s a deal above me in learning
now.” And the mother sighed.
“I’m all wrong,” growled Mr. Bell. “Don’t mind what I say. I’m a hundred
years behind the world. But I should say, that the child was getting a
better and simpler, and more natural education stopping at home, and
helping her mother, and learning to read a chapter in the New Testament
every night by her side, than from all the schooling under the sun.”
Margaret did not want to encourage him to go on by replying to him, and
so prolonging the discussion before the mother. So she turned to her and
asked,
“How is old Betty Barnes?”
“I don’t know,” said the woman rather shortly. “We’se not friends.”
“Why not?” asked Margaret, who had formerly been the peace-maker of the
village.
“She stole my cat.”
“Did she know it was yours?”
“I don’t know. I reckon not.”
“Well! could not you get it back again when you told her it was yours?”
“No! for she’d burnt it.”
“Burnt it!” exclaimed both Margaret and Mr. Bell.
“Roasted it!” explained the woman.
It was no explanation. By dint of questioning, Margaret extracted from
her the horrible fact that Betty Barnes, having been induced by a gipsy
fortune-teller to lend the latter her husband’s Sunday clothes, on
promise of having them faithfully returned on the Saturday night before
Goodman Barnes should have missed them, became alarmed by their
non-appearance, and her consequent dread of her husband’s anger, and
as, according to one of the savage country superstitions, the cries of a
cat, in the agonies of being boiled or roasted alive; compelled (as it
were) the powers of darkness to fulfil the wishes of the executioner,
resort had been had to the charm. The poor woman evidently believed in
its efficacy; her only feeling was indignation that her cat had been
chosen out from all others for a sacrifice. Margaret listened in horror;
and endeavoured in vain to enlighten the woman’s mind; but she was
obliged to give it up in despair. Step by step she got the woman to
admit certain facts, of which the logical connexion and sequence was
perfectly clear to Margaret; but at the end, the bewildered woman simply
repeated her first assertion, namely, that “it were very cruel for sure,
and she should not like to do it; but that there was nothing like it for
giving a person what they wished for; she had heard it all her life; but
it were very cruel for all that.” Margaret gave it up in despair, and
walked away sick at heart.
“You are a good girl not to triumph over me,” said Mr. Bell.
“How? What do you mean?”
“I own I am wrong about schooling. Anything rather than have that child
brought up in such practical paganism.”
“Oh! I remember. Poor little Susan! I must go and see her; would you
mind calling at the school?”
“Not a bit. I am curious to see something of the teaching she is to
receive.”
They did not speak much more, but thridded their way through many a
bosky dell, whose soft green influence could not charm away the shock
and the pain in Margaret’s heart, caused by the recital of such cruelty;
a recital too, the manner of which betrayed such utter want of
imagination, and therefore of any sympathy with the suffering animal.
The buzz of voices, like the murmur of a hive of busy human bees, made
itself heard as soon as they emerged from the forest on the more open
village-green on which the school was situated. The door was wide open,
and they entered. A brisk lady in black, here, there, and everywhere,
perceived them, and bade them welcome with somewhat of the hostess-air
which, Margaret remembered, her mother was wont to assume, only in a
more soft and languid manner, when any rare visitors strayed in to
inspect the school. She knew at once it was the present Vicar’s wife,
her mother’s successor; and she would have drawn back from the interview
had it been possible; but in an instant she had conquered this feeling,
and modestly advanced, meeting many a bright glance of recognition, and
hearing many a half-suppressed murmur of “It’s Miss Hale.” The Vicar’s
lady heard the name, and her manner at once became more kindly. Margaret
wished she could have helped feeling that it also became more
patronizing. The lady held out a hand to Mr. Bell, with,—
“Your father, I presume, Miss Hale. I see it by the likeness. I am sure
I am very glad to see you, sir, and so will the Vicar be.”
Margaret explained that it was not her father, and stammered out the
fact of his death; wondering all the time how Mr. Hale could have borne
coming to revisit Helstone, if it had been as the Vicar’s lady supposed.
She did not hear what Mrs. Hepworth was saying, and left it to Mr. Bell
to reply, looking round, meanwhile, for her old acquaintances.
“Ah! I see you would like to take a class, Miss Hale. I know it by
myself. First class stand up for a parsing lesson with Miss Hale.”
Poor Margaret, whose visit was sentimental, not in any degree
inspective, felt herself taken in; but as in some way bringing her in
contact with little eager faces, once well-known, and who had received
the solemn rite of baptism from her father, she sate down, half losing
herself in tracing out the changing features of the girls, and holding
Susan’s hand for a minute or two, unobserved by all, while the first
class sought for their books, and the Vicar’s lady went as near as a
lady could towards holding Mr. Bell by the button, while she explained
the Phonetic system to him, and gave him a conversation she had had with
the Inspector about it.
Margaret bent over her book, and seeing nothing but that—hearing the
buzz of children’s voices, old times rose up, and she thought of them,
and her eyes filled with tears, till all at once there was a pause—one
of the girls was stumbling over the apparently simple word “a,”
uncertain what to call it.
“A, an indefinite article,” said Margaret, mildly.
“I beg your pardon,” said the Vicar’s wife, all eyes and ears; “but we
are taught by Mr. Milsome to call ‘a’ an—who can remember?”
“An adjective absolute,” said half-a-dozen voices at once. And Margaret
sate abashed. The children knew more than she did. Mr. Bell turned away,
and smiled.
Margaret spoke no more during the lesson. But after it was over, she
went quietly round to one or two old favourites, and talked to them a
little. They were growing out of children into great girls; passing out
of their recollection in their rapid development, as she, by her three
year’s absence, was vanishing from theirs. Still she was glad to have
seen them all again, though a tinge of sadness mixed itself with her
pleasure. When school was over for the day, it was yet early in the
summer afternoon; and Mrs. Hepworth proposed to Margaret that she and
Mr. Bell should accompany her to the parsonage, and see—the word
“improvements” had half slipped out of her mouth, but she substituted
the more cautious term “alterations” which the present Vicar was making.
Margaret did not care a straw about seeing the alterations, which jarred
upon her fond recollection of what her home had been; but she longed to
see the old place once more, even though she shivered away from the pain
which she knew she should feel.
The parsonage was so altered, both inside and out, that the real pain
was less than she anticipated. It was not like the same place. The
garden, the grass-plat, formerly so daintily trim that even a stray
rose-leaf seemed like a fleck on the exquisite arrangement and
propriety, was strewed with children’s things; a bag of marbles here, a
hoop there; a straw-hat forced down upon a rose-tree as on a peg, to the
destruction of a long beautiful tender branch laden with flowers, which
in former days would have been trained up tenderly, as if beloved. The
little square matted hall was equally filled with signs of merry healthy
rough childhood.
“Ah!” said Mrs. Hepworth, “you must excuse this untidiness, Miss Hale.
When the nursery is finished, I shall insist upon a little order. We are
building a nursery out of your room, I believe. How did you manage, Miss
Hale, without a nursery?”
“We were but two,” said Margaret. “You have many children, I presume?”
“Seven. Look here! we are throwing out a window to the road on this
side. Mr. Hepworth is spending an immense deal of money on this house;
but really it was scarcely habitable when we came—for so large a family
as ours I mean, of course.” Every room in the house was changed, besides
the one of which Mrs. Hepworth spoke, which had been Mr. Hale’s study
formerly; and where the green gloom and delicious quiet of the place had
conduced, as he had said, to a habit of meditation, but, perhaps, in
some degree to the formation of a character more fitted for thought than
action. The new window gave a view of the road, and had many advantages,
as Mrs. Hepworth pointed out. From it the wandering sheep of her
husband’s flock might be seen, who straggled to the tempting beer-house,
unobserved as they might hope, but not unobserved in reality; for the
active Vicar kept his eye on the road, even during the composition of
his most orthodox sermons, and had a hat and stick hanging ready at hand
to seize, before sallying out after his parishioners, who had need of
quick legs if they could take refuge in the “Jolly Forester” before the
teetotal Vicar had arrested them. The whole family were quick, brisk,
loud-talking, kind-hearted, and not troubled with much delicacy of
perception. Margaret feared that Mrs. Hepworth would find out that Mr.
Bell was playing upon her, in the admiration he thought fit to express
for everything that especially grated on his taste. But no! she took it
all literally, and with such good faith, that Margaret could not help
remonstrating with him as they walked slowly away from the parsonage
back to their inn.
“Don’t scold, Margaret. It was all because of you. If she had not shown
you every change with such evident exultation in their superior sense,
in perceiving what an improvement this and that would be, I could have
behaved well. But if you must go on preaching, keep it till after
dinner, when it will send me to sleep, and help my digestion.”
They were both of them tired, and Margaret herself so much so, that she
was unwilling to go out as she had proposed to do, and have another
ramble among the woods and fields so close to the home of her childhood.
And, somehow, this visit to Helstone had not been all—had not been
exactly what she had expected. There was change everywhere; slight, yet
pervading all. Households were changed by absence, or death, or
marriage, or the natural mutations brought by days and months and
years, which carry us on imperceptibly from childhood to youth, and
thence through manhood to age, whence we drop like fruit, fully ripe,
into the quiet mother earth. Places were changed—a tree gone here, a
bough there, bringing in a long ray of light where no light was
before—a road was trimmed and narrowed, and the green straggling
pathway by its side enclosed and cultivated. A great improvement it was
called; but Margaret sighed over the old picturesqueness, the old gloom,
and the grassy way-side of former days. She sate by the window on the
little settle, sadly gazing out upon the gathering shades of night,
which harmonized well with her pensive thought. Mr. Bell slept soundly,
after his unusual exercise through the day. At last he was roused by the
entrance of the tea-tray, brought in by a flushed-looking country-girl,
who had evidently been finding some variety from her usual occupation of
waiter, in assisting this day in the hay-field.
“Hallo! Who’s there! Where are we? Who’s that,—Margaret? Oh, now I
remember all. I could not imagine what woman was sitting there in such a
doleful attitude, with her hands clasped straight out upon her knees,
and her face looking so steadfastly before her. What are you looking
at?” asked Mr. Bell, coming to the window, and standing behind Margaret.
“Nothing,” said she, rising up quickly, and speaking as cheerfully as
she could at a moment’s notice.
“Nothing indeed! A bleak back-ground of trees, some white linen hung out
on the sweet-briar hedge, and a great waft of damp air. Shut the window,
and come in and make tea.”
Margaret was silent for some time. She played with her teaspoon, and did
not attend particularly to what Mr. Bell said. He contradicted her, and
she took the same sort of smiling notice of his opinion as if he had
agreed with her. Then she sighed, and putting down her spoon, she began,
apropos of nothing at all, and in the high-pitched voice which usually
shows that the speaker has been thinking for some time on the subject
that they wish to introduce—“Mr. Bell, you remember what we were saying
about Frederick last night, don’t you?”
“Last night. Where was I? Oh, I remember! Why, it seems a week ago. Yes,
to be sure, I recollect we talked about him, poor fellow.”
“Yes—and do you remember that Mr. Lennox spoke about his having been in
England about the time of dear mamma’s death?” asked Margaret, her voice
now lower than usual.
“I recollect. I hadn’t heard of it before.”
“And I thought—I always thought that papa had told you about it.”
“No! he never did. But what about it, Margaret?”
“I want to tell you of something I did that was very wrong, about that
time,” said Margaret, suddenly looking up at him with her clear honest
eyes. “I told a lie!” and her face became scarlet.
“True, that was bad I own; not but what I have told a pretty round
number in my life, not all in downright words, as I suppose you did, but
in actions, or in some shabby circumlocutory way, leading people either
to disbelieve the truth, or believe a falsehood. You know who is the
father of lies, Margaret? Well! a great number of folk, thinking
themselves very good, have odd sorts of connexion with lies, left-hand
marriages, and second-cousins-once-removed. The tainting blood of
falsehood runs through us all. I should have guessed you as far from it
as most people. What! crying, child? Nay, now we’ll not talk of it, if
it ends in this way. I dare say you have been sorry for it, and that you
won’t do it again, and it’s long ago now, and in short I want you to be
very cheerful, and not very sad, this evening.”
Margaret wiped her eyes, and tried to talk about something else, but
suddenly she burst out afresh.
“Please, Mr. Bell, let me tell you about it—you could perhaps help me a
little; no, not help me, but if you knew the truth, perhaps you could
put me to rights—that is not it, after all,” said she, in despair at
not being able to express herself more exactly as she wished.
Mr. Bell’s whole manner changed. “Tell me all about it, child,” said he.
“It’s a long story; but when Fred came, mamma was very ill, and I was
undone with anxiety, and afraid, too, that I might have drawn him into
danger; and we had an alarm just after her death, for Dixon met some one
in Milton—a man called Leonards—who had known Fred, and who seemed to
owe him a grudge, or at any rate to be tempted by the recollection of
the reward offered for his apprehension; and with this new fright, I
thought I had better hurry off Fred to London, where, as you would
understand from what we said the other night, he was to go to consult
Mr. Lennox as to his chances if he stood trial. So we—that is, he and
I,—went to the railway station; it was one evening, and it was just
getting rather dusk, but still light enough to recognize and be
recognized, and we were too early, and went out to walk in a field just
close by; I was always in a panic about this Leonards, who was, I knew,
somewhere in the neighbourhood; and then, when we were in the field, the
low red sunlight just in my face, some one came by on horseback in the
road just below the field-style on which we stood.—I saw him look at
me, but I did not know who it was at first, the sun was so in my eyes,
but in an instant the dazzle went off, and I saw it was Mr. Thornton,
and we bowed”——
“And he saw Frederick of course,” said Mr. Bell, helping her on with her
story, as he thought.
“Yes; and then at the station a man came up—tipsy and reeling—and he
tried to collar Fred, and over-balanced himself as Fred wrenched himself
away, and fell over the hedge of the platform; not far, not deep; not
above three feet; but oh! Mr. Bell, somehow that fall killed him!”
“How awkward. It was this Leonards, I suppose. And how did Fred get
off?”
“Oh! he went off immediately after the fall, which we never thought
could have done the poor fellow any harm, it seemed so slight an
injury.”
“Then he did not die directly?”
“No! not for two or three days. And then—oh, Mr. Bell! now comes the
bad part,” said she, nervously twining her fingers together. “A police
inspector came and taxed me with having been a companion of the young
man, whose push or blow had occasioned Leonards’ death; that was a false
accusation, you know, but we had not heard that Fred had sailed, he
might still be in London and liable to be arrested on this false charge,
and his identity with the Lieutenant Hale, accused of causing the
mutiny, discovered, he might be shot; all this flashed through my mind,
and I said it was not me. I was not at the railway station that night. I
knew nothing about it. I had no conscience or thought but to save
Frederick.”
“I say it was right. I should have done the same. You forgot yourself in
thought for another. I hope I should have done the same.”
“No, you would not. It was wrong, disobedient, faithless. At that very
time Fred was safely out of England, and in my blindness I forgot that
there was another witness who could testify to my being there.”
“Who?”
“Mr. Thornton. You know he had seen me close to the station; we had
bowed to each other.”
“Well! he would know nothing of this riot, about the drunken fellow’s
death. I suppose the injury never came to anything.”
“No! the proceedings they had begun to talk about on the inquest were
stopped. Mr. Thornton did know all about it. He was a magistrate, and he
found out that it was not the fall that had caused the death. But not
before he knew what I had said. Oh, Mr. Bell!” She suddenly covered her
face with her hands, as if wishing to hide herself from the presence of
the recollection.
“Did you have any explanation with him? Did you ever tell him the
strong, instinctive motive?”
“The instinctive want of faith, and clutching at a sin to keep myself
from sinking,” said she bitterly. “No! How could I? He knew nothing of
Frederick. To put myself to rights in his good opinion, was I to tell
him the secrets of our family, involving, as they seemed to do, the
chances of poor Frederick’s entire exculpation? Fred’s last words had
been to enjoin me to keep his visit a secret from all. You see, papa
never told, even you. No! I could bear the shame—I thought I could at
least. I did bear it. Mr. Thornton has never respected me since.”
“He respects you, I am sure,” said Mr. Bell. “To be sure it accounts a
little for——. But he always speaks of you with regard and esteem,
though now I understand certain reservations in his manner.”
Margaret did not speak; did not attend to what Mr. Bell had to say; lost
all sense of it. By-and-by she said:
“Will you tell me what you refer to about ‘reservations’ in his manner
of speaking to me?”
“Oh! simply he has annoyed me by not joining in my praises of you. Like
an old fool, I thought that every one would have the same opinion as I
had; and he evidently could not agree with me. I was puzzled at the
time. But he must be perplexed, if the affair has never been in the
least explained. There was first your walking out with a young man in
the dark——”
“But it was my brother!” said Margaret, surprised.
“True. But how was he to know that?”
“I don’t know. I never thought anything of that kind,” said Margaret,
reddening, and looking hurt and offended.
“And perhaps he never would, but for the lie,—which, under the
circumstances, I maintain, was necessary.”
“It was not. I know it now. I bitterly repent it.”
There was a long pause of silence. Margaret was the first to speak.
“I am not likely ever to see Mr. Thornton again,”—and there she
stopped.
“There are many things more unlikely, I should say,” replied Mr. Bell.
“But I believe I never shall. Still, somehow one does not like to have
sunk so low in—in a friend’s opinion as I have done in his.” Her eyes
were full of tears, but her voice was steady, and Mr. Bell was not
looking at her. “And now that Frederick has given up all hope, and
almost all wish of ever clearing himself, and returning to England, it
would be only doing myself justice to have all this explained. If you
please, and if you can, if there is a good opportunity, (don’t force an
explanation upon him, pray,) but if you can, will you tell him the whole
circumstances, and tell him also that I gave you leave to do so, because
I felt that for poor papa’s sake I should not like to lose his respect,
though we may never be likely to meet again?”
“Certainly. I think he ought to know. I do not like you to rest even
under a shadow of an impropriety; he would not know what to think of
seeing you alone with a young man.”
“As for that,” said Margaret, rather haughtily, “I hold it is ‘Honi soit
qui mal y pense,’ Yet still I should choose to have it explained, if any
natural opportunity for easy explanation occurs. But it is not to clear
myself of any suspicion of improper conduct that I wish to have him
told—if I thought that he had suspected me, I should not care for his
good opinion—no! it is that he may learn how I was tempted, and how I
fell into the snare; why I told that falsehood, in short.”
“Which I don’t blame you for. It is no partiality of mine, I assure
you.”
“What other people may think of the rightness or wrongness is nothing in
comparison to my own deep knowledge, my innate conviction that it was
wrong. But we will not talk of that any more, if you please. It is
done—my sin is sinned. I have now to put it behind me, and be truthful
for evermore, if I can.”
“Very well. If you like to be uncomfortable and morbid, be so. I always
keep my conscience as tight shut up as a jack-in-a-box, for when it
jumps into existence it surprises me by its size. So I coax it down
again, as the fisherman coaxed the genii. ‘Wonderful,’ says I, ‘to think
that you have been concealed so long, and in so small a compass, that I
really did not know of your existence. Pray, sir, instead of growing
larger and larger every instant, and bewildering me with your misty
outlines, would you once more compress yourself into your former
dimensions?’ And when I’ve got him down, don’t I clap the seal on the
vase, and take good care how I open it again, and how I go against
Solomon, wisest of men, who confined him there.”
But it was no smiling matter to Margaret. She hardly attended to what
Mr. Bell was saying. Her thoughts ran upon the idea, before entertained,
but which now had assumed the strength of a conviction, that Mr.
Thornton no longer held his former good opinion of her—that he was
disappointed in her. She did not feel as if any explanation could ever
reinstate her—not in his love, for that and any return on her part she
had resolved never to dwell upon, and she kept rigidly to her
resolution—but in the respect and high regard which she had hoped would
have ever made him willing, in the spirit of Gerald Griffin’s beautiful
lines,
“To turn and look back when thou hearest
The sound of my name.”
She kept choking and swallowing all the time that she thought about it.
She tried to comfort herself with the idea, that what he imagined her to
be, did not alter the fact of what she was. But it was a truism, a
phantom, and broke down under the weight of her regret. She had twenty
questions on the tip of her tongue to ask Mr. Bell, but not one of them
did she utter. Mr. Bell thought that she was tired, and sent her early
to her room, where she sate long hours by the open window, gazing out on
the purple dome above, where the stars arose, and twinkled and
disappeared behind the great umbrageous trees before she went to bed.
All night long too, there burnt a little light on earth; a candle in her
old bedroom, which was the nursery with the present inhabitants of the
parsonage, until the new one was built. A sense of change, of individual
nothingness, of perplexity and disappointment, overpowered Margaret.
Nothing had been the same; and this slight, all-pervading instability,
had given her greater pain than if all had been too entirely changed for
her to recognise it.
“I begin to understand now what heaven must be—and, oh! the grandeur
and repose of the words—‘The same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.’
Everlasting! ‘From everlasting to everlasting, Thou art God.’ That
beautiful sky above me looks as though it could not change, and yet it
will. I am so tired—so tired of being whirled on through all these
phases of my life, in which nothing abides by me, no creature, no place;
it is like the circle in which the victims of earthly passion eddy
continually. I am in the mood in which women of another religion take
the veil. I seek heavenly steadfastness in earthly monotony. If I were a
Roman Catholic and could deaden my heart, stun it with some great blow,
I might become a nun. But I should pine after my kind; no, not my kind,
for love for my species could never fill my heart to the utter exclusion
of love for individuals. Perhaps it ought to be so, perhaps not; I
cannot decide to-night.”
Wearily she went to bed, wearily she arose in four or five hours’ time.
But with the morning came hope, and a brighter view of things.
“After all it is right,” said she, hearing the voices of children at
play while she was dressing. “If the world stood still, it would
retrograde and become corrupt, if that is not Irish. Looking out of
myself and my own painful sense of change, the progress of all around me
is right and necessary. I must not think so much of how circumstances
affect me myself, but how they affect others, if I wish to have a right
judgment, or a hopeful trustful heart.” And with a smile ready in her
eyes to quiver down to her lips, she went into the parlour and greeted
Mr. Bell.
“Ah, Missy! you were up late last night, and so you’re late this
morning. Now I’ve got a little piece of news for you. What do you think
of an invitation to dinner? a morning call, literally in the dewy
morning. Why, I’ve had the Vicar here already, on his way to the school.
How much the desire of giving our hostess a teetotal lecture for the
benefit of the hay-makers, had to do with his earliness, I don’t know;
but here he was, when I came down just before nine; and we are asked to
dine there to-day.”
“But Edith expects me back—I cannot go,” said Margaret, thankful to
have so good an excuse.
“Yes! I know; so I told him. I thought you would not want to go. Still
it is open, if you would like it.”
“Oh, no!” said Margaret. “Let us keep to our plan. Let us start at
twelve. It is very good and kind of them; but indeed I could not go.”
“Very well. Don’t fidget yourself, and I’ll arrange it all.”
Before they left, Margaret stole round to the back of the Vicarage
garden, and gathered a little straggling piece of honeysuckle. She would
not take a flower the day before, for fear of being observed, and her
motives and feelings commented upon. But as she returned across the
common, the place was reinvested with the old enchanting atmosphere. The
common sounds of life were more musical there than anywhere else in the
whole world, the light more golden, the life more tranquil and full of
dreamy delight. As Margaret remembered her feelings yesterday, she said
to herself:
“And I too change perpetually—now this, now that—now disappointment
and peevish because all is not exactly as I had pictured it, and now
suddenly discovering that the reality is far more beautiful than I had
imagined it. Oh, Helstone! I shall never love any place like you.”
A few days afterwards, she had found her level, and decided that she was
very glad to have been there, and that she had seen it again, and that
to her it would always be the prettiest spot in the world, but that it
was so full of associations with former days, and especially with her
father and mother, that if it were all to come over again, she should
shrink back from such another visit as that which she had paid with Mr.
Bell.