Margaret was not at Mrs Howell's at the moment that her brother
believed and said she was. She had been there just in time to witness
the poor woman's departure; and she was soon home again and relating the
circumstances to Hester, by the fireside. Even the news that Edward was
now in the same house with Philip, could not efface from her mind what
she had seen; nor could Hester help listening, though full of anxiety
about her husband.
"Miss Miskin was prevailed upon to leave her room at the last, I
suppose?"
"Scarcely. Poor Nanny was supporting her mistress's head when I went
in; and she said, with tears, that there was no depending on any one but
us. They both looked glad enough to see me: but then, nothing would
satisfy Mrs Howell but that I should warm myself, and be seated."
"To the last! and she offered you some cherry-bounce, I suppose."
"Yes; just as usual. Then she told me that it would be as well to
mention now, in case she should grow worse, and be in any danger, that
she should be gratified if you and I would select each a rug or screen
pattern from her stock, and worsteds to work it with: and she gave a
broad hint that there was one with a mausoleum and two weeping willows,
which she hoped one of us would choose; and that perhaps her name might
fill up the space on the tomb. Poor Nanny began to cry; and this
affected Mrs Howell; and she begged earnestly to see Miss Miskin."
"And then she came, I suppose."
"Not she! She would not come till her friend sent a message threatening
to haunt her if she did not."
"Did you carry the message?"
"No; but Nanny did; and, I thought, with hearty good will; Miss Miskin
came trembling, but too much frightened to cry. She would not approach
nearer than the doorway, and there fell down on her knees, and so
remained the whole time she was receiving directions about the shop and
the stock,--`in case,' as the poor soul again said, `of my getting
worse, so as to be in any danger.' And yet Dr Levitt thought he had
told her, plainly enough, what he thought of her state this morning."
"And was she aware at last? or did she go off unconsciously?"
"I think she was aware; I think so from her last words--`Oh, my poor
dear Howell!' I sat behind the curtain while she was speaking to Miss
Miskin--sometimes so faintly that Nanny had to repeat her words, to make
them heard as far as the door."
"That selfish wretch--Miss Miskin!"
"It was very moving, I assure you, to hear not one word of reproach,--or
even notice of Miss Miskin's desertion in this illness. What was said
was common-place enough; but every word was kind. I have it all. I
took it down with my pencil, behind the curtain; for I was sure Miss
Miskin would never remember it. Mrs Howell went on till she came to
directions about the bullfinch that her poor dear Howell used to laugh
to see perched upon her nightcap of a morning; and then she grew
unintelligible. I thought she was only fainting; but while we were
trying to revive her, Nanny said she was going. Miss Miskin drew back
into the passage, shut the door, and made her escape. Her friend looked
that way once more, and said that we had all been very good to her. She
mentioned her husband, as I told you, and then died very quietly."
"Miss Miskin knows, of course?"
"I told her, and did not pretend to feel much sympathy in her
lamentations. I told her she had lost a friend who would have watched
over her, I believed, till her last breath, if she had been the one
attacked by the fever."
"What did she say?"
"She exclaimed a great deal about how good we all were, and wondered
what Deerbrook would have done without us; and said she was sure I was
too kind to think of leaving her in the house with the corpse, with only
Nanny. When I declined passing the night there, she comforted herself
with thinking aloud that her friend would not haunt her--certainly would
not haunt her--as she _had_ gone to her room at last. Her final
question was, how soon I thought it likely that she should feel the
fever coming on, in case of her having caught it, after all, by going
into the room."
"What an end to a sentimental friendship of so many years!"
"I rather expect to hear in the morning that she has taken refuge in
some neighbour's house, and left Nanny alone with the corpse to-night."
"My husband's knock!" cried Hester, starting up. "How is your headache,
love?" asked she anxiously, as she met him at the room door.
"Gone, quite gone," he replied. "I must step down into the surgery for
a minute, about this poor little girl's medicine; and then I have a
great deal to tell you."
The sisters sat in perfect silence till his return.
"Matilda?" said Margaret, looking up at her brother.
"She is very ill;--not likely to be better."
"And poor Mrs Howell is gone," said Hester. "What a sweep it is! Did
you hear, love? Mrs Howell is dead."
"I hear. It is a terrible destruction that we have witnessed. But I
trust it is nearly over. I know of only one or two cases of danger now,
besides this little girl's. Poor Matilda! But we have little thought
to spare, even for her, to-night. If I did not know that Margaret is
ready for whatever may betide," he continued, fixing his benevolent gaze
upon her, "and if, moreover, I were not afraid that some one would be
coming to tell my news if I do not get it out at once, I should hesitate
about saying what I have to say."
"Philip has been explaining--He is coming," said Margaret, with such
calmness as she could command.
"Enderby is coming; and some one else, whose explanations are more to
the purpose, has been explaining. Mrs Rowland, alarmed and shaken by
her misery, has been acknowledging the whole series of falsehoods by
which she persuaded, convinced her brother that you did not love him--
that you were, in fact, attached elsewhere. I see how angry you are,
Hester. I see you asking in your own mind how Enderby could be thus
deluded--how he could trust his sister rather than Margaret--how I can
speak of him as deserving to have her after all this. Your questions
are reasonable enough, love, and yet they cannot be answered. Your
doubts of Enderby are reasonable enough; and yet I declare to you that
he is in my eyes almost, if not quite, blameless."
"Thank you, brother!" said Margaret, looking up with swimming eyes.
"There is one great point to be settled," resumed Hope: "and that is,
whether you will both be content to bury in silence the subject of this
quarrel, from this hour, relying upon my testimony and Mrs Rowland's."
"Oh, Edward, do not put your name and hers together!"
"For Enderby's justification, and for Margaret's sake, my name shall be
joined with the arch-fiend's, if necessary, my love. You must, as I was
saying, rely upon the testimony of those who know the whole, that
Enderby's conduct throughout has been, if not the very wisest and best,
perfectly natural, and consistent with the love for Margaret which he
has cherished to this hour."
"I knew it," murmured Margaret.
"He will himself disclose as much as he thinks proper, when he comes:
but he comes full of fear and doubt about his reception."
Margaret hung her head, feeling that it was well she was reminded what
reason there was for his coming with doubt and trembling in his heart.
"As he comes full of fear and doubt," resumed Hope, "I must tell you
first that he never received your last letter, Margaret. He thought you
would not answer his. He thought you took him at his word about not
attempting explanation."
"What an unhappy accident!" cried Hester. "Who carried that letter?
How did it happen?"
"It was no accident, my dear. Mrs Rowland burned that letter."
Margaret covered her face with her hands; then, suddenly looking up, she
cried:
"Did she read it?"
"No. She says she dared not. Why, Margaret, you seem sorry that she
did not! You think it would have cleared you. I have no doubt she
thought so too; and that that was the reason why she averted her eyes
from it. Yes, it was a cruel injury, Margaret. Can you forgive it, do
you think?"
"Not to-night," said Hester. "Do not ask it of her to-night."
"I believe I may ask it at this very moment. The happy can forgive. Is
it not so, Margaret?"
"For myself I could and I do, brother. I would go now and nurse her
child, and comfort her. But--"
"But you cannot forgive the wretchedness she has caused to Philip.
Well, if you each forgive her for your own part, there is a chance that
she may yet lift up her humbled head."
"What possessed her to hate us so?" said Hester.
"Her hatred to us is the result of long habits of ill-will, of selfish
pride, and of low pertinacity about small objects. That is the way in
which I account for it all. She disliked you first for your connection
with the Greys; and then she disliked me for my connection with you.
She nourished up all her personal feelings into an opposition to us and
our doings; and when she had done this, and found her own only brother
going over to the enemy, as she regarded it, her dislike grew into a
passion of hatred. Under the influence of this passion, she has been
led on to say and to do more and more that would suit her purposes, till
she has found herself sunk in an abyss of guilt. I really believe she
was not fully aware of her situation, till her misery of to-day revealed
it to her."
"Poor thing!" said Margaret. "Is there nothing we can do to help her?"
"We will ask Enderby. I take hers to be no uncommon case. The dislikes
of low and selfish minds generally bear very much the character of hers,
though they may not be pampered by circumstances into such a luxuriance
as in this case. In a city, Mrs Rowland might have been an ordinary
spiteful fine lady. In such a place as Deerbrook, and with a family of
rivals' cousins incessantly before her eyes, to exercise her passions
upon, she has ended in being--"
"What she is," said Margaret, as Hope stopped for a word.
"Margaret is less surprised than you expected, is she not?" said Hester.
"You did not suppose that she would sit and listen as she does to your
analysis of Mrs Rowland. But if the truth were known, she carries a
prophecy about her on her finger. I have no doubt she has been
expecting this very news ever since she recovered her ring. Yes or no,
Margaret?"
"I should rather say she has carried a prophecy in her heart all these
long months," said Hope, "of which that on her finger is only the
symbol."
"However it may be," said Hester, "it has prepared a reception for Mr
Enderby. There is no resisting a prophecy. What is written is
written."
"I must hear him, you know," said Margaret, gently.
"You must; and you must hear him favourably," said her brother.
"I had forgotten," said Hester, ringing the bell. "Morris, a good fire
in the breakfast-room, immediately."
Within the hour, Philip and Margaret were by that fireside, finally
wedded in heart and soul. It was astonishing how little explanation was
needed when Margaret had once been told, in addition to the fact of her
letter having been destroyed, that she was declared to have made Mrs
Enderby the depository of her confidence about a prior attachment.
There was, however, as much to relate as there was little to explain.
How Enderby's heart burned within him, when, in sporting with the idea
of a prior attachment, it came out what Margaret had felt at the moment
of his intrusion upon the conference with Hope, of which he had since,
as at the time, been so jealous! the amusement on her own part, and the
joy on Hester's, which she was trying to conceal by her downcast looks!
How his soul melted within him when she owned her momentary regret at
being saved from under the ice, and the consolation and stimulus she had
derived from her brother's expression of affection for her on the spot!
How clear, how true a refutation were these revealings of the
imputations that had been cast upon her! and how strangely had the facts
been distorted by a prejudiced imagination! How sweet in the telling
was the story of the ring, so sad in the experience! and the recountings
of the times that they had seen each other of late. Philip had caught
more glimpses than she. He came down--he dared not say to watch over
her in this time of sickness--but because he could not stay away when he
heard of the condition of Deerbrook. But for this sickness would they
have met--should they ever have understood each other again? This was a
speculation on which they could not dwell--it led them too near the
verge of the grave which was yawning for Matilda. Mrs Rowland would
have been relieved, but the relief would have been not unmixed with
humiliation, if she could have known how easily she was let off in this
long conference. Not only can the happy easily forgive, but they are
exceedingly apt to forget the causes and the history of their woes; and
the wretched lady who, in the midst of her grief and terror for her
child, trembled at home at the image of the lovers she had injured, was,
to those lovers in their happiness, much as if she had never existed.
"Mrs Howell!" said Margaret, hearing her sister mention their departed
neighbour, after Philip was gone. "Is it possible that it was this very
afternoon that I saw that poor woman die?"
"Even so, dear. How many days, or months, or years, have you lived
since? A whole age of bliss, Margaret!"