"A spade! a rake! a hoe! A pickaxe or a bill! A hook to reap, or a scythe to mow, A flail or what ye will-- And here's a ready hand To ply the needful tool, And skill'd enough, by lessons rough, In Labour's rugged school." HOOD.
Higgins's door was locked the next day, when they went to pay their call on the widow Boucher: but they learnt this time from an officious neighbour, that he was really from home. He had, however, been in to see Mrs. Boucher, before starting on his day's business, whatever that was. It was but an unsatisfactory visit to Mrs. Boucher; she considered herself an ill-used woman by her poor husband's suicide; and there was quite germ of truth enough in this idea to make it a very difficult one to refute. Still, it was unsatisfactory to see how completely her thoughts were turned upon herself and her own position, and this selfishness extended even to her relations with her children, whom she considered as incumbrances, even in the very midst of her somewhat animal affection for them. Margaret tried to make acquaintances with one or two of them, while her father strove to raise the widow's thoughts into some higher channel than that of mere helpless querulousness. She found that the children were truer and simpler mourners than the widow. Daddy had been a kind daddy to them; each could tell, in their eager stammering way, of some tenderness shown, some indulgence granted by the lost father.
"Is yon thing upstairs really him? it doesna look like him. I'm feared on it, and I never was feared o' daddy."
Margaret's heart bled to hear that the mother, in her selfish requirement of sympathy, had taken her children upstairs to see their dead disfigured father. It was intermingling the coarseness of horror with the profoundness of natural grief. She tried to turn their thoughts in some other direction; on what they could do for mother; on what--for this was a more efficacious way of putting it--what father would have wished them to do. Margaret was more successful than Mr. Hale in her efforts. The children seeing their little duties lie in action close around them, began to try each one to do something that she suggested towards redding up the slatternly room. But her father set too high a standard, and too abstract a view, before the indolent invalid. She could not rouse her torpid mind into any vivid imagination of what her husband's misery might have been, before he had resorted to the last terrible step; she could only look upon it as it affected herself; she could not enter into the enduring mercy of the God who had not specially interposed to prevent the water from drowning her prostrate husband; and although she was secretly blaming her husband for having fallen into such drear despair, and denying that he had any excuse for his last rash act, she was inveterate in her abuse of all who could by any possibility be supposed to have driven him to such desperation. The masters--Mr. Thornton in particular, whose mill had been attacked by Boucher, and who, after the warrant had been issued for his apprehension on the charge of rioting, had caused it to be withdrawn,--the Union, of which Higgins was a representative to the poor woman,--the children so numerous, so hungry, and so noisy--all made up one great army of personal enemies, whose fault it was that she was now a helpless widow.
Margaret heard enough of this unreasonableness to dishearten her; and when they came away she found it impossible to cheer her father.
"It is the town life," said she. "Their nerves are quickened by the haste and bustle and speed of everything around them, to say nothing of the confinement in these pent-up houses, which of itself is enough to induce depression and worry of spirits. Now in the country, people live so much more out of doors, even children, and even in the winter."
"But people must live in towns. And in the country some get such stagnant habits of mind that they are almost fatalists."
"Yes; I acknowledge that. I suppose each mode of life produces its own trials and its own temptations. The dweller in towns must find it as difficult to be patient, as the country-bred man must find it to be active, and equal to unwonted emergencies. Both must find it hard to realise a future of any kind; the one because the present is so living and hurrying and close around him; the other because his life tempts him to revel in the mere sense of animal existence, not knowing of, and consequently not caring for any pungency of pleasure, for the attainment of which he can plan, and deny himself and look forward."
"And thus both the necessity for engrossment, and the stupid content in the present, produce the same effects. But this poor Mrs. Boucher! how little we can do for her."
"And yet we dare not leave her without our efforts, although they may seem so useless. Oh papa! it's a hard world to live in!"
"So it is, my child. We feel it so just now, at any rate; but we have been very happy, even in the midst of our sorrow. What a pleasure Frederick's visit was!"
"Yes, that it was," said Margaret, brightly. "It was such a charming, snatched, forbidden thing." But she suddenly stopped speaking. She had spoiled the remembrance of Frederick's visit to herself by her own cowardice. Of all faults the one she most despised in others was the want of bravery; the meanness of heart which leads to untruth. And here had she been guilty of it! Then came the thought of Mr. Thornton's cognisance of her falsehood. She wondered if she should have minded detection half so much from any one else. She tried herself in imagination with her Aunt Shaw and Edith; with her father; with Captain and Mr. Lennox; with Frederick. The thought of the last knowing what she had done, even in his own behalf, was the most painful, for the brother and sister were in the first flush of their mutual regard and love; but even any fall in Frederick's opinion was as nothing to the shame, the shrinking shame she felt at the thought of meeting Mr. Thornton again. And yet she longed to see him, to get it over; to understand where she stood in his opinion. Her cheeks burnt as she recollected how proudly she had implied an objection to trade (in the early days of their acquaintance), because it too often led to the deceit of passing off inferior for superior goods, in the one branch; of assuming credit for wealth and resources not possessed, in the other. She remembered Mr. Thornton's look of calm disdain, as in few words he gave her to understand that, in the great scheme of commerce, all dishonourable ways of acting were sure to prove injurious in the long run, and that, testing such actions simply according to the poor standard of success, there was folly and not wisdom in all such, and every kind of deceit in trade, as well as in other things. She remembered--she, then strong in her own untempted truth--asking him, if he did not think that buying in the cheapest and selling in the dearest market proved some want of the transparent justice which is so intimately connected with the idea of truth: and she had used the word chivalric--and her father had corrected her with the higher word, Christian; and so drawn the argument upon himself, while she sate silent by with a slight feeling of contempt.
No more contempt for her!--no more talk about the chivalric! Henceforward she must feel humiliated and disgraced in his sight. But when should she see him? Her heart leaped up in apprehension at every ring of the door-bell; and yet, when it fell down to calmness, she felt strangely saddened and sick at heart at each disappointment. It was very evident that her father expected to see him, and was surprised that he did not come. The truth was, that there were points in their conversation the other night on which they had no time then to enlarge; but it had been understood that if possible on the succeeding evening--if not then, at least the very first evening that Mr. Thornton could command,--they should meet for further discussion. Mr. Hale had looked forward to this meeting ever since they had parted. He had not yet resumed the instruction to his pupils, which he had relinquished at the commencement of his wife's more serious illness, so he had fewer occupations than usual; and the great interest of the last day or so (Boucher's suicide) had driven him back with more eagerness than ever upon his speculations. He was restless all the evening. He kept saying, "I quite expected to have seen Mr. Thornton. I think the messenger who brought the book last night must have had some note, and forgot to deliver it. Do you think there has been any message left to-day?"
"I will go and inquire, papa," said Margaret, after the changes on these sentences had been rung once or twice, "Stay, there's a ring!" She sat down instantly, and bent her head attentively over her work. She heard a step on the stairs, but it was only one, and she knew it was Dixon's. She lifted up her head and sighed, and believed she felt glad.
"It's that Higgins, sir. He wants to see you, or else Miss Hale. Or it might be Miss Hale first, and then you, sir; for he's in a strange kind of way."
"He had better come up here, Dixon; and then he can see us both, and choose which he likes for his listener."
"Oh! very well, sir. I've no wish to hear what he's got to say, I'm sure; only, if you could see his shoes, I'm sure you'd say the kitchen was the fitter place."
"He can wipe them, I suppose," said Mr. Hale. So Dixon flung off, to bid him walk up-stairs. She was a little mollified, however, when he looked at his feet with a hesitating air; and then, sitting down on the bottom stair, he took off the offending shoes, and without a word walked up-stairs.
"Sarvant, sir!" said he, slicking his hair down when he came into the room: "If hoo'l excuse me (looking at Margaret) for being i' my stockings; I'se been tramping a' day, and streets is none o' th' cleanest."
Margaret thought that fatigue might account for the change in his manner, for he was unusually quiet and subdued; and he had evidently some difficulty in saying what he came to say.
Mr. Hale's ever-ready sympathy with anything of shyness or hesitation, or want of self-possession, made him come to his aid.
"We shall have tea up directly, and then you'll take a cup with us, Mr. Higgins. I am sure you are tired, if you've been out much this wet relaxing day. Margaret, my dear, can't you hasten tea?"
Margaret could only hasten tea by taking the preparation of it into her own hands, and so offending Dixon, who was emerging out of her sorrow for her late mistress into a very touchy, irritable state. But Martha, like all who came in contact with Margaret--even Dixon herself, in the long run--felt it a pleasure and an honour to forward any of her wishes; and her readiness, and Margaret's sweet forbearance, soon made Dixon ashamed of herself.
"Why master and you must always be asking the lower classes up-stairs, since we came to Milton, I cannot understand. Folk at Helstone were never brought higher than the kitchen; and I've let one or two of them know before now that they might think it an honour to be even there."
Higgins found it easier to unburden himself to one than to two. After Margaret left the room, he went to the door and assured himself that it was shut. Then he came and stood close to Mr. Hale.
"Master," said he, "yo'd not guess easy what I've been tramping after to-day. Special if yo'd remember my manner o' talk yesterday. I've been a seeking work. I have," said he. "I said to mysel', I'd keep a civil tongue in my head, let who would say what 'em would. I'd set my teeth into my tongue sooner nor speak i' haste. For that man's sake--yo' understand," jerking his thumb back in some unknown direction.
"No, I don't," said Mr. Hale, seeing he waited for some kind of assent, and completely bewildered as to who "that man" could be.
"That chap as lies theer," said he, with another jerk. "Him as went and drownded himself, poor chap! I did na think he'd got it in him to lie still and let the water creep o'er him till he died. Boucher, yo' know."
"Yes, I know now," said Mr. Hale. "Go back to what you were saying: you'd not speak in haste----"
"For his sake. Yet not for his sake; for where'er he is, and whate'er, he'll ne'er know other clemming or cold again; but for the wife's sake, and the bits o' childer."
"God bless you!" said Mr. Hale, starting up; then, calming down, he said, breathlessly, "What do you mean? Tell me out."
"I have telled yo'," said Higgins, a little surprised at Mr. Hale's agitation. "I would na ask for work for mysel'; but them's left as a charge on me. I reckon, I would ha guided Boucher to a better end; but I set him off o' th' road, and so I mun answer for him."
Mr. Hale got hold of Higgins's hand and shook it heartily, without speaking. Higgins looked awkward and ashamed.
"Theer, theer, master! Theer's ne'er a man, to call a man, amongst us, but what would do th' same; ay, and better too; for, belie' me, Is'e ne'er got a stroke o' work, nor yet a sight of any. For all I telled Hamper that, let alone his pledge--which I would not sign--no, I could na, not e'en for this--he'd ne'er ha' such a worker on his mill as I would be--he'd ha' none o' me--no more would none o' th' others. I'm a poor black feckless sheep--childer may clem for ought I can do, unless, parson, yo'd help me?"
"Help you! How? I would do anything,--but what can I do?"
"Miss there"--for Margaret had re-entered the room, and stood silent, listening--"has often talked grand o' the South, and the ways down there. Now I dunnot know how far off it is, but I been thinking if I could get 'em down theer, where food is cheap and wages good, and all the folk, rich and poor, master and man, friendly like; yo' could, may be, help me to work. I'm not forty-five, and I've a deal o' strength in me, measter."
"But what kind of work could you do, my man?"
"Well, I reckon I could spade a bit----"
"And for that," said Margaret, stepping forwards, "for anything you could do, Higgins, with the best will in the world, you would, may be, get nine shillings a week; may be ten, at the outside. Food is much the same as here, except that you might have a little garden----"
"The childer could work at that," said he. "I'm sick o' Milton anyways, and Milton is sick o' me."
"You must not go the South," said Margaret, "for all that. You could not stand it. You would have to be out all weathers. It would kill you with rheumatism. The mere bodily work at your time of life would break you down. The fare is far different to what you have been accustomed to."
"I'se nought particular about my meat," said he, as if offended.
"But you've reckoned on having butcher's meat once a day, if you're in work; pay for that out of your ten shillings, and keep those poor children if you can. I owe it to you--since it's my way of talking that has set you off on this idea--to put it all clear before you. You would not bear the dulness of the life; you don't know what it is; it would eat you away like rust. Those that have lived there all their lives, are used to soaking in the stagnant waters. They labour on from day to day, in the great solitude of steaming fields--never speaking or lifting up their poor, bent, downcast heads. The hard spadework robs their brain of life; the sameness of their toil deadens their imagination; they don't care to meet to talk over thoughts and speculations, even of the weakest, wildest kind, after their work is done; they go home brutishly tired, poor creatures! caring for nothing but food and rest. You could not stir them up into any companionship, which you get in a town as plentiful as the air you breathe, whether it be good or bad--and that I don't know; but I do know, that you of all men are not one to bear a life among such labourers. What would be peace to them, would be eternal fretting to you. Think no more of it, Nicholas, I beg. Besides, you could never pay to get mother and children all there--that's one good thing."
"I've reckoned for that. One house mun do for us a', and the furniture o' t'other would go a good way. And men theer mun have their families to keep--mappen six or seven childer. God help 'em!" said he, more convinced by his own presentation of the facts than by all Margaret had said, and suddenly renouncing the idea, which had but recently formed itself in a brain worn out by the day's fatigue and anxiety. "God help 'em! North an' South have each getten their own troubles. If work's sure and steady theer, labour's paid at starvation wages; while here we'n rucks o' money coming in one quarter, and ne'er a farthing th' next. For sure, th' world is in a confusion that passes me or any other man to understand; it needs fettling, and who's to fettle it if it's as yon folks say, and there's nought but what we see?"
Mr. Hale was busy cutting bread and butter; Margaret was glad of this, for she saw that Higgins was better left to himself: that if her father began to speak ever so mildly on the subject of Higgins's thoughts, the latter would consider himself challenged to an argument, and would feel himself bound to maintain his own ground. She and her father kept up an indifferent conversation until Higgins, scarcely aware whether he ate or not, had made a very substantial meal. Then he pushed his chair away from the table, and tried to take an interest in what they were saying; but it was of no use; and he fell back into dreamy gloom. Suddenly, Margaret said (she had been thinking of it for some time, but the words had stuck in her throat), "Higgins have you been to Marlborough Mills to seek for work?"
"Thornton's?" asked he. "Ay, I've been at Thornton's"
"And what did he say?"
"Such a chap as me is not like to see the measter. Th' o'erlooker bid me go and be d----d."
"I wish you had seen Mr. Thornton," said Mr. Hale. "He might not have given you work, but he would not have used such language."
"As to th' language, I'm welly used to it; it dunnot matter to me. I'm not nesh mysel' when I'm put out. It were th' fact that I were na wanted theer, no more nor ony other place, as I minded."
"But I wish you had seen Mr. Thornton," repeated Margaret. "Would you go again--it's a good deal to ask, I know--but would you go to-morrow and try him? I should be so glad if you would."
"I'm afraid it would be of no use," said Mr. Hale, in a low voice. "It would be better to let me speak to him." Margaret still looked at Higgins for his answer. Those grave soft eyes of hers were difficult to resist. He gave a great sigh.
"It would tax my pride above a bit; if it were for mysel', I could stand a deal o' clemming first; I'd sooner knock him down than ask a favour from him. I'd a deal sooner be flogged mysel'; but yo're not a common wench, axing yo'r pardon, nor yet have yo' common ways about yo'. I'll e'en make a wry face, and go at it to-morrow. Dunna yo' think that he'll do it. That man has it in him to be burnt at the stake afore he'll give in. I'll do it for yo'r sake, Miss Hale, and it's first time in my life as e'er I give way to a woman. Neither my wife nor Bess could e'er say that much again me."
"All the more do I thank you," said Margaret, smiling. "Though I don't believe you: I believe you have just given way to wife and daughter as much as most men."
"And as to Mr. Thornton," said Mr. Hale, "I'll give you a note to him, which, I think I may venture say, will ensure you a hearing."
"I thank yo' kindly, sir, but I'd as lief stand on my own bottom. I dunnot stomach the notion of having favour curried for me, by one as doesn't know the ins and outs of the quarrel. Meddling 'twixt master and man is liker meddling 'twixt husband and wife than aught else: it takes a deal of wisdom to do ony good. I'll stand guard at the lodge door. I'll stand there fro' six in the morning till I get speech on him. But I'd liefer sweep th' streets, if paupers had na' got hold on that work. Dunna yo' hope, miss. There'll be more chance o' getting milk out of a flint. I wish yo' a very good night, and many thanks to yo'."
"You'll find your shoes by the kitchen fire; I took them there to dry," said Margaret.
He turned round and looked at her steadily, and then he brushed his lean hand across his eyes and went his way.
"How proud that man is!" said her father, who was a little annoyed at the manner in which Higgins had declined his intercession with Mr. Thornton.
"He is," said Margaret; "but what grand makings of a man there are in him, pride and all."
"It's amusing to see how he evidently respects the part in Mr. Thornton's character which is like his own."
"There's granite in all these northern people, papa, is there not?"
"There was none in poor Boucher, I am afraid; none in his wife either."
"I should guess by their tones that they had Irish blood in them. I wonder what success he'll have to-morrow. If he and Mr. Thornton would speak out together as man to man--if Higgins would forget that Mr. Thornton was a master, and speak to him as he does to us--and if Mr. Thornton would be patient enough to listen to him with his human heart, not with his master's ears--"
"You are getting to do Mr. Thornton justice at last, Margaret," said her father, pinching her ear.
Margaret had a strange choking at her heart, which made her unable to answer, "Oh!" thought she, "I wish I were a man, that I could go and force him to express his disapprobation, and tell him honestly that I knew I deserved it. It seems hard to lose him as a friend just when I had begun to feel his value. How tender he was with dear mamma! If it were only for her sake, I wish he would come, and then at least I should know how much I was abased in his eyes."

Higgins's door was locked the next day: but they learnt from a neighbour that he was really away from home. He had, however, been in to see Mrs. Boucher, whom Margaret and her father visited next.
It was an unsatisfactory visit: Mrs. Boucher considered herself ill-used by her poor husband's suicide; and there was truth enough in this idea to make it difficult to refute. Her thoughts were turned upon herself and her own position, and this selfishness extended even to her children, whom she considered as incumbrances, in the very midst of her affection for them. While Mr. Hale spoke to her, Margaret talked to one or two of the children, and found that they were truer and simpler mourners than the widow. Daddy had been kind to them; each could tell, in their eager stammering way, of some tenderness shown by the lost father.
'Is yon thing upstairs really him? It doesna look like him. I'm feared on it, and I never was feared o' daddy.'
Margaret's heart bled to hear that the mother had taken her children upstairs to see their disfigured father. She tried to turn their thoughts in some other direction; on what they could do for mother; on what father would have wished. The children began to do as she suggested towards tidying up the slatternly room.
But her father, trying to raise the widow's thoughts, set too high a standard, and too abstract a view. She could not rouse her torpid mind to imagine what her husband's misery might have been; she could only look upon it as it affected herself. Although she was secretly blaming her husband for having fallen into such despair, and denying that he had any excuse for his last rash act, she abused all who could be supposed to have driven him to such desperation. The masters - Mr. Thornton in particular, whose mill had been attacked by Boucher - the Union, represented by Higgins - the children so numerous, so hungry, and so noisy - all made up one great army of personal enemies, whose fault it was that she was now a helpless widow.
Margaret was disheartened; and when they came away she found it impossible to cheer her father.
'It is the town life,' said she. 'The haste and bustle of everything around them, to say nothing of the confinement in these pent-up houses, is enough to induce depression and worry. In the country, people live so much more out of doors, even in the winter.'
'But people must live in towns. And in the country some get such stagnant habits of mind that they are almost fatalists.'
'Yes; I acknowledge that. I suppose each mode of life produces its own trials. The town-dweller must find it as difficult to be patient and calm, as the country-bred man to be active. Both must find it hard to realise a future of any kind; the one because the present is so hurrying and close around him; the other because his slow life tempts him to revel in the mere sense of animal existence, rather than looking forward.'
'But this poor Mrs. Boucher! how little we can do for her.'
'And yet we must try. Oh papa! it's a hard world to live in!'
'So it is, my child. Yet we have been very happy, even in the midst of our sorrow. What a pleasure Frederick's visit was!'
'Yes, that it was,' said Margaret. 'It was such a charming, snatched thing.' But she suddenly stopped speaking as she remembered her own cowardice. Of all faults, the one she most despised in others was the want of bravery and truth. And she had been guilty of it! Then came the thought of Mr. Thornton's knowledge of her falsehood. She wondered if she should have minded detection half so much from anyone else. She did not think so. Even a fall in Frederick's opinion would be as nothing to the shrinking shame she felt at the thought of meeting Mr. Thornton again.
And yet she longed to see him, to get it over; to understand where she stood in his opinion. Her cheeks burnt as she recollected how proudly she had implied an objection to trade in the early days of their acquaintance, because it led to a passing off of inferior as superior goods. She remembered Mr. Thornton's look of calm disdain, as in a few words he gave her to understand that there was folly and deceit in every walk of life, and that all dishonourable ways of acting were sure to prove injurious in the long run. She remembered how she - strong in her own untempted truth - had asked him if buying in the cheapest and selling in the dearest market did not show a lack of justice. She had used the word chivalric; her father had corrected her with the word, Christian; and so drawn the argument upon himself, while she sat silent with a slight feeling of contempt.
No more contempt! - no more talk about the chivalric! Henceforward she must feel humiliated and disgraced in his sight. But when should she see him? Her heart leaped up in apprehension at every ring of the door-bell; and yet she felt strangely saddened and sick at heart with each disappointment. Her father was surprised that he did not come. Mr. Hale had not yet resumed his tutoring, so he had fewer occupations than usual. He was restless all evening. He kept saying, 'I quite expected to have seen Mr. Thornton. Has there been any message left today?'
'I will go and inquire, papa,' said Margaret.
'Wait, there's a ring!'
She sat down instantly, and bent her head attentively over her work. She heard a step on the stairs, but knew it was only Dixon's. She lifted up her head and sighed, and believed she felt glad.
'It's that Higgins, sir. He wants to see you, or else Miss Hale. He's in a strange kind of way.'
'He had better come up here, Dixon; and then he can see us both.'
'Oh! very well, sir. Only if you could see his shoes, I'm sure you'd say the kitchen was the fitter place.'
'He can wipe them, I suppose,' said Mr. Hale.
So Dixon flung off, to bid him walk upstairs. She was a little mollified, however, when Higgins looked at his feet; and then, sitting down on the bottom stair, took off the offending shoes, and walked up.
'If hoo'l excuse me for being i' my stockings,' he said, looking at Margaret, 'I'se been tramping all day, and streets is none o' th' cleanest.'
He was unusually subdued; and he had evidently some difficulty in saying what he came to say. Mr. Hale, ever-ready in sympathy with shyness, said:
'We shall have tea directly, and then you'll take a cup with us, Mr. Higgins. I am sure you are tired, if you've been out all day. Margaret, my dear, can't you hasten tea?'
Margaret could only hasten tea by taking the preparation of it into her own hands, and so offending Dixon, who was emerging out of her sorrow for her late mistress into a very touchy, irritable state.
'Why master and you must always be asking the lower classes upstairs, since we came to Milton, I cannot understand. Folk at Helstone were never brought higher than the kitchen.'
Higgins found it easier to unburden himself to one than to two. After Margaret left the room, he said:
'Master, yo'd not guess easy what I've been tramping after today. I've been a seeking work. I said to mysel', I'd keep a civil tongue in my head, let who would say what 'em would. For that man's sake - yo' understand,' jerking his thumb back in some unknown direction.
'No, I don't,' said Mr. Hale, bewildered as to who 'that man' could be.
'Him as went and drownded himself, poor chap! Boucher, yo' know.'
'Yes,' said Mr. Hale. 'Go on.'
'I'll not speak in haste for his sake. Yet not for his sake; but for the wife's sake, and the childer.'
'God bless you! What do you mean? Tell me.'
'I have telled yo',' said Higgins, a little surprised. 'I would na ask for work for mysel'; but them's left as a charge on me. I reckon I set Boucher off o' th' road, and so I mun answer for him.'
Mr. Hale took Higgins's hand and shook it heartily, without speaking. Higgins looked awkward and ashamed.
'Theer, theer, master! Theer's ne'er a man amongst us, but what would do th' same. Ay, and better too; for I'se ne'er got a stroke o' work. For all I telled them that they'd ne'er ha' such a worker as I would be - they'd ha' none o' me. I'm a poor black feckless sheep - childer may clem for aught I can do, unless, parson, yo'd help me?'
'Help you! I would do anything - but what can I do?'
'Miss there' - for Margaret had re-entered the room, and stood listening - 'has often talked grand o' the South. Now I dunnot know how far off it is, but I've been thinking if I could get down theer, where food is cheap and wages good, and all the folk friendly like; yo' could, maybe, help me to find work. I'm not forty-five, and I've a deal o' strength in me, measter.'
'But what kind of work could you do?'
'Well, I reckon I could spade a bit.'
'And for that,' said Margaret, stepping forwards, 'with the best will in the world, you would, maybe, get nine shillings a week; ten at the outside. And food costs much the same as here.'
'I'm sick o' Milton anyways, and Milton is sick o' me.'
'You must not go to the South,' said she, 'for all that. You could not stand it. You would have to be out in all weathers. The bodily work at your time of life would break you down. The fare is far different to what you have been accustomed to.'
'I'se nought particular about my meat,' said he, as if offended.
'But you've reckoned on having butcher's meat once a day, if you're in work. I owe it to you to put it all clear before you. You would not bear the dullness of the life; you don't know what it is; it would eat you away like rust. Those that have lived there all their lives, are used to labouring on, from day to day, in the great solitude of steaming fields - never speaking or lifting up their poor, bent heads. The toil robs their brain of life; it deadens their imagination; they don't care to meet to talk after their work is done; they go home brutishly tired, poor creatures! caring for nothing but food and rest. You could not stir them up into any companionship. You of all men could not bear a life among such labourers. Think no more of it, Nicholas, I beg. Besides, you could never pay to get mother and children all there.'
'I've reckoned for that. One house mun do for us all. And men theer must have their families to keep - God help 'em!' said he. 'God help 'em! North an' South have each getten their own troubles. If work's sure and steady theer, labour's paid at starvation prices; while here we'n rucks o' money coming in one quarter, and ne'er a farthing th' next. For sure, th' world is in a confusion that passes understanding; it needs fettling, and who's to fettle it?'
Mr. Hale was busy cutting bread and butter, and did not argue with this. He and Margaret kept up an indifferent conversation until Higgins had made a very substantial meal. Then he pushed his chair away from the table, and fell back into dreamy gloom.
Suddenly, Margaret said, 'Higgins, have you been to Marlborough Mills to seek for work?'
'Thornton's?' asked he. 'Ay, I've been at Thornton's.'
'And what did he say?'
'I didna see the measter. Th' o'erlooker bid me go and be d___ d.'
'I wish you had seen Mr. Thornton,' said Mr. Hale. 'He might not have given you work, but he would not have used such language.'
'I'm used to it; it dunnot matter to me. It were th' fact that I were na wanted theer that I minded.'
'Would you go again tomorrow,' said Margaret, 'and try to see Mr. Thornton? I should be so glad if you would.'
'I'm afraid it would be of no use,' said Mr. Hale, in a low voice.
Higgins gave a great sigh. 'It would tax my pride above a bit; if it were for mysel', I'd sooner be flogged. But I'll make a wry face, and go at it tomorrow. Dunna yo' think that he'll do it. That man has it in him to be burnt at the stake afore he'll give in. I do it for your sake, Miss Hale, and it's first time in my life as e'er I give way to a woman. Neither my wife nor Bess could e'er say that much against me.'
'I thank you,' said Margaret, smiling. 'Though I don't believe you: I expect you have given way to wife and daughter as much as most men.'
'As to Mr. Thornton,' said Mr. Hale, 'I'll give you a note to him, which should ensure you a hearing.'
'I thank yo' kindly, sir, but I'd as lief stand on my own. I'll stand guard at the lodge door fro' six in the morning till I get speech on him. But dunna yo' hope, miss. There'll be more chance o' getting milk out of a flint. I wish yo' a very good night, and many thanks to yo'.'
'You'll find your shoes by the kitchen fire; I put them there to dry,' said Margaret.
He turned round and looked at her steadily, and then he brushed his lean hand across his eyes and went his way.
'How proud that man is!' said her father.
'What grand makings of a man there are in him,' replied Margaret, 'pride and all. There's granite in all these northern people, papa, is there not?'
'There was none in poor Boucher, I am afraid; none in his wife either.'
'I wonder what success he'll have tomorrow. If Higgins would forget that Mr. Thornton was a master, and speak to him as he does to us - and if Mr. Thornton would be patient enough to listen to him with his human heart, not with his master's ears-'
'You are getting to do Mr. Thornton justice at last, Margaret,' said her father.
Margaret had a strange choking at her heart, which made her unable to answer. But she thought, 'I wish I were a man, and could go and force him to express his disapproval, and tell him honestly that I knew I deserved it. It is hard to lose him as a friend just when I had begun to feel his value. How tender he was with dear mamma! I wish he would come, and then at least I should know how much I was abased in his eyes.'


"When some beloved voice that was to you Both sound and sweetness, faileth suddenly, And silence, against which you dare not cry, Aches round you like a strong disease and new,-- What hope? what help? what music will undo That silence to your sense?" MRS. BROWNING.
The shock had been great. Margaret fell into a state of prostration, which did not show itself in sobs and tears, or even find the relief of words. She lay on the sofa with her eyes shut, never speaking but when spoken to, and then replying in whispers. Mr. Bell was perplexed. He dared not leave her; he dared not ask her to accompany him back to Oxford, which had been one of the plans he had formed on the journey to Milton, her physical exhaustion was evidently too complete for her to undertake any such fatigue--putting the sight that she would have to encounter out of the question. Mr. Bell sate over the fire, considering what he had better do. Margaret lay motionless, and almost breathless by him. He would not leave her, even for the dinner which Dixon had prepared for him downstairs, and, with sobbing hospitality, would fain have tempted him to eat. He had a plateful of something brought up to him. In general, he was particular and dainty enough, and knew well each shade of flavour in his food, but now the devilled chicken tasted like sawdust. He minced up some of the fowl for Margaret, and peppered and salted it well; but when Dixon, following his directions, tried to feed her, the languid shake of head, proved that in such a state as Margaret was in, food would only choke, not nourish her.
Mr. Bell gave a great sigh; lifted up his stout old limbs (stiff with travelling) from their easy position, and followed Dixon out of the room.
"I can't leave her. I must write to them at Oxford, to see that the preparations are made: they can be getting on with these till I arrive. Can't Mrs. Lennox come to her? I'll write and tell her she must. The girl must have some woman-friend about her, if only to talk her into a good fit of crying."
Dixon was crying--enough for two; but, after wiping her eyes and steadying her voice, she managed to tell Mr. Bell, that Mrs. Lennox was too near her confinement to be able to undertake any journey at present.
"Well! I suppose we must have Mrs. Shaw; she's come back to England, isn't she?"
"Yes, sir, she's come back; but I don't think she will like to leave Mrs. Lennox at such an interesting time," said Dixon, who did not much approve of a stranger entering the household, to share with her in her ruling care of Margaret.
"Interesting time be----." Mr. Bell restricted himself by coughing over the end of his sentence. "She could be content to be at Venice or Naples, or some of those Popish places, at the last 'interesting time,' which took place in Corfu, I think. And what does that little prosperous woman's 'interesting time' signify, in comparison with that poor creature there,--that helpless, homeless, friendless, Margaret--lying as still on that sofa as if it were an altar-tomb, and she the stone statue on it. I tell you, Mrs. Shaw shall come. See that a room, or whatever she wants, is got ready for her by to-morrow night. I'll take care she comes."
Accordingly Mr. Bell wrote a letter, which Mrs. Shaw declared, with many tears, to be so like one of the dear general's when he was going to have a fit of the gout, that she should always value and preserve it. If he had given her the option, by requesting or urging her, as if a refusal were possible, she might not have come--true and sincere as was her sympathy with Margaret. It needed the sharp uncourteous command to make her conquer her vis inerti and allow herself to be packed by her maid, after the latter had completed the boxes. Edith, all cap, shawl, and tears, came out to the top of the stairs, as Captain Lennox was taking her mother down to the carriage:
"Don't forget, mamma; Margaret must come and live with us. Sholto will go to Oxford on Wednesday, and you must send word by Mr. Bell to him when we're to expect you. And if you want Sholto, he can go on from Oxford to Milton. Don't forget, mamma; you are to bring back Margaret."
Edith re-entered the drawing-room. Mr. Henry Lennox was there, cutting open the pages of a new Review. Without lifting his head, he said, "If you don't like Sholto to be so long absent from you, Edith, I hope you will let me go down to Milton, and give what assistance I can."
"Oh, thank you," said Edith, "I dare say old Mr. Bell will do everything he can, and more help may not be needed. Only one does not look for much savoir-faire from a resident Fellow. Dear, darling Margaret; won't it be nice to have her here, again? You were both great allies, years ago."
"Were we?" asked he indifferently, with an appearance of being interested in a passage in the Review.
"Well, perhaps not--I forget. I was so full of Sholto. But doesn't it fall out well, that if my uncle was to die, it should be just now, when we are come home, and settled in the old house, and quite ready to receive Margaret? Poor thing! what a change it will be to her from Milton! I'll have new chintz for her bed-room, and make it look new and bright, and cheer her up a little."
In the same spirit of kindness, Mrs. Shaw journeyed to Milton, occasionally dreading the first meeting, and wondering how it would be got over; but more frequently planning how soon she could get Margaret away from "that horrid place," and back in the pleasant comforts of Harley Street.
"Oh dear!" she said to her maid; "look at those chimneys! My poor sister Hale! I don't think I could have rested at Naples, if I had known what it was! I must have come and fetched her and Margaret away." And to herself she acknowledged, that she had always thought her brother-in-law rather a weak man, but never so weak as now, when she saw for what a place he had exchanged the lovely Helstone home.
Margaret had remained in the same state; white, motionless, speechless, tearless. They had told her that her aunt Shaw was coming; but she had not expressed either surprise or pleasure, or dislike to the idea. Mr. Bell, whose appetite had returned, and who appreciated Dixon's endeavours to gratify it, in vain urged upon her to taste some sweetbreads stewed with oysters; she shook her head with the same quiet obstinacy as on the previous day; and he was obliged to console himself for her rejection, by eating them all himself. But Margaret was the first to hear the stopping of the cab that brought her aunt from the railway station. Her eyelids quivered, her lips coloured and trembled. Mr. Bell went down to meet Mrs. Shaw; and when they came up, Margaret was standing, trying to steady her dizzy self; and when she saw her aunt, she went forward to the arms open to receive her, and first found the passionate relief of tears on her aunt's shoulder. All thoughts of quiet habitual love, of tenderness for years, of relationship to the dead, all that inexplicable likeness in look, tone, and gesture, that seem to belong to one family, and which reminded Margaret so forcibly at this moment of her mother, came in to melt and soften her numbed heart into the overflow of warm tears.
Mr. Bell stole out of the room, and went down into the study, where he ordered a fire, and tried to divert his thoughts by taking down and examining the different books. Each volume brought a remembrance or a suggestion of his dead friend. It might be a change of employment from his two days' work of watching Margaret, but it was no change of thought. He was glad to catch the sound of Mr. Thornton's voice, making enquiry at the door. Dixon was rather cavalierly dismissing him; for with the appearance of Mrs. Shaw's maid, came visions of former grandeur, of the Beresford blood, of the "station" (so she was pleased to term it) from which her young lady had been ousted, and to which she was now, please God, to be restored. These visions, which she had been dwelling on with complacency in her conversation with Mrs. Shaw's maid (skilfully eliciting meanwhile all the circumstances of state and consequence connected with the Harley Street establishment, for the edification of the listening Martha), made Dixon rather inclined to be supercilious in her treatment of any inhabitant of Milton; so, though she always stood rather in awe of Mr. Thornton, she was as curt as she durst be in telling him that he could see none of the inmates of the house that night. It was rather uncomfortable to be contradicted in her statement by Mr. Bell's opening the study-door, and calling out:
"Thornton! is that you? Come in for a minute or two; I want to speak to you." So Mr. Thornton went into the study, and Dixon had to retreat into the kitchen, and reinstate herself in her own esteem by a prodigious story of Sir John Beresford's coach and six, when he was high sheriff.
"I don't know what I wanted to say to you after all. Only it's dull enough to sit in a room where everything speaks to you of a dead friend. Yet Margaret and her aunt must have the drawing-room to themselves!"
"Is Mrs.--is her aunt come?" asked Mr. Thornton.
"Come? Yes! maid and all. One would have thought she might have come by herself at such a time! And now I shall have to turn out and find my way to the Clarendon."
"You must not go to the Clarendon. We have five or six empty bed-rooms at home."
"Well aired?"
"I think you may trust my mother for that."
"Then I'll only run upstairs and wish that wan girl good-night, and make my bow to her aunt, and go off with you straight."
Mr. Bell was some time upstairs. Mr. Thornton began to think it long, for he was full of business, and had hardly been able to spare the time for running up to Crampton, and enquiring how Miss Hale was.
When they had set out upon their walk, Mr. Bell said:
"I was kept by those women in the drawing-room. Mrs. Shaw is anxious to get home--on account of her daughter, she says--and wants Margaret to go off with her at once. Now she is no more fit for travelling than I am for flying. Besides, she says, and very justly, that she has friends she must see--that she must wish good-bye to several people; and then her aunt worried her about old claims, and was she forgetful of old friends? And she said, with a great burst of crying, she should be glad enough to go from a place where she had suffered so much. Now I must return to Oxford to-morrow, and I don't know on which side of the scale to throw in my voice."
He paused, as if asking a question; but he received no answer from his companion, the echo of whose thoughts kept repeating--
"Where she had suffered so much." Alas! and that was the way in which this eighteen months in Milton--to him so unspeakably precious, down to its very bitterness, which was worth all the rest of life's sweetness--would be remembered. Neither loss of father, nor loss of mother, dear as she was to Mr. Thornton, could have poisoned the remembrance of the weeks, the days, the hours, when a walk of two miles, every step of which was pleasant, as it brought him nearer and nearer to her, took him to her sweet presence--every step of which was rich, as each recurring moment that bore him away from her made him recall some fresh grace in her demeanour, or pleasant pungency in her character. Yes! whatever had happened to him, external to his relation to her, he could never have spoken of that time, when he could have seen her every day--when he had her within his grasp, as it were--as a time of suffering. It had been a royal time of luxury to him, with all its stings and contumelies, compared to the poverty that crept round and clipped the anticipation of the future down to sordid fact, and life without an atmosphere of either hope or fear.
Mrs. Thornton and Fanny were in the dining-room; the latter in a flutter of small exultation, as the maid held up one glossy material after another, to try the effect of the wedding-dresses by candle-light. Her mother really tried to sympathise with her, but could not. Neither taste nor dress were in her line of subjects, and she heartily wished that Fanny had accepted her brother's offer of having the wedding clothes provided by some first-rate London dressmaker, without the endless troublesome discussions, and unsettled waverings, that arose out of Fanny's desire to choose and superintend everything herself. Mr. Thornton was only too glad to mark his grateful approbation of any sensible man, who could be captivated by Fanny's second-rate airs and graces, by giving her ample means for providing herself with the finery, which certainly rivalled, if it did not exceed, the lover in her estimation. When her brother and Mr. Bell came in, Fanny blushed and simpered, and fluttered over the signs of her employment, in a way which could not have failed to draw attention from any one else but Mr. Bell. If he thought about her and her silks and satins at all, it was to compare her and them with the pale sorrow he had left behind him, sitting motionless, with bent head and folded hands, in a room where the stillness was so great that you might almost fancy the rush in your straining ears was occasioned by the spirits of the dead, yet hovering round their beloved. For when Mr. Bell had first gone upstairs, Mrs. Shaw lay asleep on the sofa; and no sound broke the silence.
Mrs. Thornton gave Mr. Bell her formal, hospitable welcome. She was never so gracious as when receiving her son's friends in her son's house; and the more unexpected they were, the more honour to her admirable housekeeping preparations for comfort.
"How is Miss Hale?" she asked.
"About as broken down by this last stroke as she can be."
"I am sure it is very well for her that she has such a friend as you."
"I wish I were her only friend, madam. I daresay it sounds very brutal; but here have I been displaced, and turned out of my post of comforter and adviser by a fine lady aunt; and there are cousins and what not claiming her in London, as if she were a lap-dog belonging to them. And she is too weak and miserable to have a will of her own."
"She must indeed be weak," said Mrs. Thornton, with an implied meaning which her son understood well. "But where," continued Mrs. Thornton, "have these relations been all this time that Miss Hale has appeared almost friendless, and has certainly had a good deal of anxiety to bear?" But she did not feel interest enough in the answer to her question to wait for it. She left the room to make her household arrangements.
"They have been living abroad. They have some kind of claim upon her. I will do them that justice. The aunt brought her up, and she and the cousin have been like sisters. The thing vexing me, you see, is that I wanted to take her for a child of my own; and I am jealous of these people, who don't seem to value the privilege of their right. Now it would be different if Frederick claimed her."
"Frederick!" exclaimed Mr. Thornton. "Who is he? What right----?" He stopped short in his vehement question.
"Frederick," said Mr. Bell in surprise. "Why, don't you know? He's her brother. Have you not heard----"
"I never heard his name before. Where is he? Who is he?"
"Surely I told you about him, when the family first came to Milton--the son who was concerned in that mutiny."
"I never heard of him till this moment. Where does he live?"
"In Spain. He's liable to be arrested the moment he sets foot on English ground. Poor fellow! he will grieve at not being able to attend his father's funeral. We must be content with Captain Lennox; for I don't know of any other relation."
"I hope I may be allowed to go?"
"Certainly; thankfully. You're a good fellow, after all, Thornton. Hale liked you. He spoke to me, only the other day, at Oxford. He regretted he had seen so little of you lately. I am obliged to you for wishing to show him respect."
"But about Frederick. Does he never come to England?"
"Never."
"He was not over here about the time of Mrs. Hale's death?"
"No. Why, I was here then. I hadn't seen Hale for years and years: and, if you remember, I came--No, it was some time after that that I came. But poor Frederick Hale was not here then. What made you think he was?"
"I saw a young man walking with Miss Hale one day," replied Mr. Thornton, "and I think it was about that time."
"Oh, that would be this young Lennox, the Captain's brother. He's a lawyer, and they were in pretty constant correspondence with him; and I remember Mr. Hale told me he thought he would come down. Do you know," said Mr. Bell, wheeling round, and shutting one eye, the better to bring the forces of the other to bear with keen scrutiny on Mr. Thornton's face, "that I once fancied you had a little tenderness for Margaret?"
No answer. No change of countenance.
"And so did poor Hale. Not at first, and not till I had put it into his head."
"I admired Miss Hale. Every one must do so. She is a beautiful creature," said Mr. Thornton, driven to bay by Mr. Bell's pertinacious questioning.
"Is that all! You can speak of her in that measured way, as simply a 'beautiful creature'--only something to catch the eye. I did hope you had had nobleness enough in you to make you pay her the homage of the heart. Though I believe--in fact I know, she would have rejected you, still to have loved her without return would have lifted you higher than all those, be they who they may, that have ever known her to love. 'Beautiful creature' indeed! Do you speak of her as you would of a horse or a dog?"
Mr. Thornton's eyes glowed like red embers.
"Mr. Bell," said he, "before you speak so, you should remember that all men are not as free to express what they feel as you are. Let us talk of something else." For though his heart leaped up, as at a trumpet-call, to every word that Mr. Bell had said, and though he knew that what he had said would henceforward bind the thought of the old Oxford Fellow closely up with the most precious things of his heart, yet he would not be forced into any expression of what he felt towards Margaret. He was no mocking-bird of praise to try, because another extolled what he reverenced and passionately loved, to outdo him in laudation. So he turned to some of the dry matters of business that lay between Mr. Bell and him, as landlord and tenant.
"What is that heap of brick and mortar we came against in the yard? Any repairs wanted?"
"No, none, thank you."
"Are you building on your own account? If you are, I'm very much obliged to you."
"I'm building a dining-room--for the men I mean--the hands."
"I thought you were hard to please, if this room wasn't good enough to satisfy you, a bachelor."
"I've got acquainted with a strange kind of chap, and I put one or two children in whom he is interested to school. So, as I happened to be passing near his house one day, I just went there about some trifling payment to be made; and I saw such a miserable black frizzle of a dinner--a greasy cinder of meat, as first set me a-thinking. But it was not till provisions grew so high this winter that I bethought me how, by buying things wholesale, and cooking a good quantity of provisions together, much money might be saved, and much comfort gained. So I spoke to my friend--or my enemy--the man I told you of--and he found fault with every detail of my plan; and in consequence I laid it aside, both as impracticable, and also because if I forced it into operation I should be interfering with the independence of my men; when, suddenly, this Higgins came to me and graciously signified his approval of a scheme so nearly the same as mine, that I might fairly have claimed it; and, moreover, the approval of several of his fellow-workmen, to whom he had spoken. I was a little 'riled,' I confess, by his manner, and thought of throwing the whole thing overboard to sink or swim. But it seemed childish to relinquish a plan which I had once thought wise and well-laid, just because I myself did not receive all the honour and consequence due to the originator. So I coolly took the part assigned to me, which is something like that of a steward to a club. I buy in the provisions wholesale, and provide a fitting matron or cook."
"I hope you give satisfaction in your new capacity. Are you a good judge of potatoes and onions? But I suppose Mrs. Thornton assists you in your marketing."
"Not a bit," replied Mr. Thornton. "She disapproves of the whole plan, and now we never mention it to each other. But I manage pretty well, getting in great stocks from Liverpool, and being served in butcher's meat by our own family butcher. I can assure you, the hot dinners the matron turns out are not to be despised."
"Do you taste each dish as it goes in, in virtue of your office? I hope you have a white wand."
"I was very scrupulous, at first, in confining myself to the mere purchasing part, and even in that I rather obeyed the men's orders, conveyed through the housekeeper, than went by my own judgment. At one time, the beef was too large, at another the mutton was not fat enough. I think they saw how careful I was to leave them free, and not to intrude my own ideas upon them; so, one day, two or three of the men--my friend Higgins among them--asked me if I would not come in and take a snack. It was a very busy day, but I saw that the men would be hurt if, after making the advance, I didn't meet them half-way, so I went in, and I never made a better dinner in my life. I told them (my next neighbours I mean, for I'm no speech-maker) how much I enjoyed it; and for some time, whenever that especial dinner recurred in their dietary, I was sure to be met by these men, with a 'Master, there's hot-pot for dinner to-day, win yo' come in?' If they had not asked me, I would no more have intruded on them than I'd have gone to the mess at the barracks without invitation."
"I should think you were rather a restraint on your hosts' conversation. They can't abuse the masters while you're there. I expect they take it out on non-hot-pot days."
"Well! hitherto we've steered clear of all vexed questions. But if any of the old disputes came up again, I would certainly speak out my mind next hot-pot day. But you are hardly acquainted with our Darkshire fellows, for all you're a Darkshire man yourself. They have such a sense of humour, and such a racy mode of expression! I am getting really to know some of them now, and they talk pretty freely before me."
"Nothing like the act of eating for equalising men. Dying is nothing to it. The philosopher dies sententiously--the pharisee ostentatiously--the simple-hearted humbly--the poor idiot blindly, as the sparrow falls to the ground; the philosopher and idiot, publican and pharisee, all eat after the same fashion--given an equally good digestion. There's theory for theory for you!"
"Indeed I have no theory; I hate theories."
"I beg your pardon. To show my penitence, will you accept a ten pound note towards your marketing, and give the poor fellows a feast?"
"Thank you; but I'd rather not. They pay me rent for the oven and cooking-places at the back of the mill: and will have to pay more for the new dining-room. I don't want it to fall into a charity. I don't want donations. Once let in the principle, and I should have people going and talking, and spoiling the simplicity of the whole thing."
"People will talk about any new plan. You can't help that."
"My enemies, if I have any, may make a philanthropic fuss about this dinner-scheme; but you are a friend, and I expect that you will now pay my experiment the respect of silence. It is but a new broom at present, and sweeps clean enough. But by-an-bye we shall meet with plenty of stumbling-blocks, no doubt."

The shock had been great. Margaret did not sob or even speak. She lay on the sofa with her eyes shut. Mr. Bell was perplexed. He dared not leave her; he dared not ask her to accompany him back to Oxford, which had been one of the plans he had formed on the journey to Milton. He sat by the fire, considering what he had better do. Margaret lay motionless, and almost breathless. He would not leave her, even for the dinner which Dixon had prepared for him downstairs, and, sobbing, would fain have tempted him to eat. He had a plateful of something brought up, but it tasted like sawdust. When Dixon tried to feed Margaret, the languid shake of her head indicated that food would only choke her.
Mr. Bell gave a great sigh, and followed Dixon out of the room.
'I can't leave her. I must write to Oxford, to see that preparations are made for the funeral. Can't Mrs. Lennox come to her? I'll write and tell her she must. The girl must have some woman-friend about her.'
Dixon was crying; but after wiping her eyes, she managed to tell Mr. Bell that Mrs. Lennox was too near her confinement with her second child to undertake any journey at present.
'Well! Mrs. Shaw; she's back in England, isn't she?'
'Yes, sir; but I don't think she will like to leave Mrs. Lennox at such an interesting time,' said Dixon.
'Interesting time be-' Mr. Bell restricted himself to coughing. 'What does that prosperous woman's "interesting time" signify, in comparison with that poor creature there - homeless and friendless - lying as still on that sofa as if it were an altar-tomb? I tell you, Mrs. Shaw shall come.'
Accordingly Mr. Bell wrote a letter, which did not give Mrs. Shaw the option of refusing. If he had, she might not have come - true and sincere as was her sympathy with Margaret. It needed the sharp, uncourteous command to make her conquer her inertia. She allowed her things to be packed by her maid; and Edith, in cap, shawls, and tears, called to her mother, as Captain Lennox was taking her down to the carriage:
'Don't forget, mamma; Margaret must come and live with us. You must send word by Mr. Bell to Cosmo when we're to expect you: Cosmo will be in Oxford, and can go on to Milton. Don't forget, mamma; you are to bring back Margaret.'
Edith re-entered the drawing-room, where Mr. Henry Lennox was. Without lifting his head, he said, 'If you don't like Cosmo to be so long absent from you, Edith, I hope you will let me go down to Milton, and give what assistance I can.'
'Thank you,' said Edith. 'Dear Margaret! won't it be nice to have her here again? You were both great allies, years ago.'
'Were we?' asked he, indifferently.
'Well, perhaps not - I forget. I was so full of Cosmo. But doesn't it fall out well, that my uncle should die just after we are come home, and ready to receive Margaret? Poor thing! what a change it will be from Milton! I'll have new chintz for her bedroom, and make it look bright, and cheer her up a little.'
In the same spirit of kindness, Mrs. Shaw journeyed to Milton planning how soon she could get Margaret away from 'that horrid place,' and back into the pleasant comforts of Harley Street.
'Oh dear!' she said to her maid; 'look at those chimneys! My poor sister Hale!' She had always thought her brother-in-law rather a weak man, but never so weak as now, when she saw for what a place he had exchanged the lovely Helstone home.
Margaret had remained in the same state; white, motionless, speechless, tearless. They had told her that her aunt Shaw was coming; but she had not answered. Despite Mr. Bell's urgings, she still refused to eat; she shook her head with the same quiet obstinacy as on the previous day.
She was the first to hear her aunt's cab stopping. Her eyelids quivered, her lips trembled. Mr. Bell went down to meet Mrs. Shaw, and when they came up, Margaret was standing dizzily: she went forward to her aunt's open arms, and found the passionate relief of tears. All that inexplicable likeness to her mother melted her numbed heart.
Mr. Bell stole out of the room, and went into the study, where he tried to divert his thoughts by taking down books. Each volume brought a remembrance of his dead friend. He was glad to catch the sound of Mr. Thornton's voice, making enquiry at the door. Dixon was rather cavalierly dismissing him; for the appearance of Mrs. Shaw and her Beresford blood made Dixon inclined to be supercilious in her treatment of Milton inhabitants. So, though she stood rather in awe of Mr. Thornton, she was as curt as she dared be in telling him that he could see nobody that night. Mr. Bell opened the study-door, and called out:
'Thornton! is that you? Come in; I want to speak to you.' So Mr. Thornton went into the study, and Dixon had to retreat.
'I don't know what I wanted to say to you after all. Only it's dull to sit in a room where everything reminds you of a dead friend. Yet Margaret and her aunt must have the drawing-room to themselves!'
'Is her aunt come?' asked Mr. Thornton.
'Yes! maid and all. I shall have to turn out and find my way to the Clarendon Hotel.'
'You must not go to the Clarendon. We have five or six empty bedrooms at home.'
'Then I'll just run upstairs and wish that wan girl good-night, and make my bow to her aunt, and go off with you.'
Mr. Bell was some time upstairs. Mr. Thornton began to think it long, for he was busy, and had hardly been able to spare the time for running up to Crampton to enquire after Miss Hale.
When they had set out upon their walk, Mr. Bell said:
'Mrs. Shaw is anxious to get home, and wants Margaret to go off with her at once. Now she is no more fit for travelling than I am for flying. Besides, she says, and very justly, that she has friends she must see - that she must wish good-bye to several people. And she said, with a great burst of crying, she should be glad enough to leave a place where she had suffered so much. Now I must return to Oxford tomorrow, and I don't know which side to support.'
He received no answer from his companion, who was inwardly repeating: 'Where she had suffered so much.'
Alas! and that was the way in which this eighteen months in Milton - to him so unspeakably precious, even down to its very bitterness - would be remembered by her. Nothing could have poisoned his remembrance of the weeks when a walk of two miles took him to her sweet presence - every moment of which showed him some fresh grace in her demeanour, or pleasant pungency in her character. Yes! whatever had happened to him, he could never have spoken of that period as a time of suffering. It had been a royal time of luxury to him, with all its stings, compared to the poverty that crept round the anticipation of the future.
Mrs. Thornton and Fanny were in the dining-room; the latter in a flutter of exultation, as the maid held up one glossy material after another, to try out the effect of the wedding-dresses by candlelight. Her mother really tried to sympathise with her, but could not. She heartily wished that Fanny had accepted her brother's offer of having the wedding clothes made by some London dressmaker, without these endless troublesome discussions. Mr. Thornton was only too glad to mark his approval of any sensible man who could be captivated by Fanny's second-rate airs and graces, by giving her ample means for providing herself with finery.
When her brother and Mr. Bell came in, Fanny blushed and simpered in a way which could not have failed to draw attention from anyone else but Mr. Bell. If he thought about her at all, it was to compare her with the pale sorrow he had left behind him, sitting motionless in a room so still that you might almost fancy the rush in your straining ears was caused by the spirits of the dead.
Mrs. Thornton gave Mr. Bell her formal welcome. 'How is Miss Hale?' she asked.
'About as broken down by this last stroke as she can be.'
'I am sure it is very well for her that she has such a friend as you.'
'I wish I were her only friend, madam. I daresay it sounds very brutal; but I have been displaced by a fine lady aunt; and there are cousins and what not claiming her in London, as if she were a lap-dog belonging to them. And she is too weak and miserable to have a will of her own.'
'She must indeed be weak,' said Mrs. Thornton, with an implied meaning which her son understood well. 'But where have these relations been all this time that Miss Hale has appeared almost friendless?' However, she did not feel interest enough in the answer to wait for it. She left the room to make her household arrangements.
'They have been living abroad. The aunt brought her up, and she and the cousin have been like sisters. The thing vexing me, you see, is that I wanted to take her for a child of my own; and I am jealous of these people. Now it would be different if Frederick claimed her.'
'Frederick!' exclaimed Mr. Thornton. 'Who is he? What right-?' He stopped short.
'Frederick,' said Mr. Bell in surprise. 'Why, don't you know? He's her brother.'
'I never heard his name before.'
'Surely I told you about him, when the family first came to Milton - the son who was concerned in that mutiny.'
'I never heard of him till this moment. Where does he live?'
'In Spain. He's liable to be arrested the moment he sets foot in England. Poor fellow! He will grieve at not being able to attend his father's funeral.'
'I hope I may be allowed to go?'
'Certainly. You're a good fellow, Thornton. Hale liked you.'
'But about Frederick. Does he never come to England?'
'Never.'
'He was not over here about the time of Mrs. Hale's death?'
'No. Why, I was here then - no, it was some time later. But poor Frederick was not here then. What made you think he was?'
'I saw a young man walking with Miss Hale one day, about that time,' replied Mr. Thornton.
'Oh, that would be young Lennox, the Captain's brother. He's a lawyer, and they were in pretty constant correspondence with him; I remember Mr. Hale told me he thought he would come down. Do you know,' said Mr. Bell, wheeling round, 'that I once fancied you had a little tenderness for Margaret?'
No answer. No change of countenance.
'And so did poor Hale, though not till I had put it into his head.'
'I admired Miss Hale. Everyone must do so. She is a beautiful creature,' said Mr. Thornton, at bay.
'Is that all! You can speak of her in that measured way, as simply a "beautiful creature" - only something to catch the eye. I did hope you had had nobleness enough in you to make you pay her the homage of the heart. Though I believe she would have rejected you, still to have loved her without return would have lifted you higher than all those that have never known and loved her. "Beautiful creature" indeed! Do you speak of her as you would of a horse or a dog?'
Mr. Thornton's eyes glowed like embers.
'Mr. Bell,' said he, 'not all men are as free to express what they feel as you are. Let us talk of something else.' For though his heart leaped up, as at a trumpet-call, to every word that Mr. Bell had said, he would not be forced into any expression of what he felt towards Margaret. He was no mocking-bird of praise, to try and out-do another. So he turned to some matters of business that lay between Mr. Bell and him, as landlord and tenant.
'What is that heap of brick and mortar we came against in the yard? Are you building?' asked Mr. Bell.
'I'm building a dining-room for the men - the hands. I've got acquainted with a strange kind of chap, and I put one or two children in whom he is interested in school. I happened to be passing his house one day, and called in; and I saw such a miserable black frizzle of a dinner - a greasy cinder of meat, as set me a-thinking. By buying things wholesale, and cooking a good quantity together, much money might be saved, and much comfort gained. So I spoke to this man - and he found fault with every detail of my plan; and I had laid it aside, when, suddenly, this Higgins graciously signified his approval of a scheme so nearly the same as mine, that I might fairly have claimed it. I was a little "riled", I confess, and thought of throwing the whole thing overboard. But that seemed a childish reaction; so I coolly took the part assigned to me, which is something like that of steward to a club. I buy in the provisions wholesale, and provide a cook.'
'I hope you give satisfaction. Are you a good judge of potatoes and onions? But I suppose Mrs. Thornton assists you.'
'Not a bit,' replied Mr. Thornton. 'She disapproves of the whole plan. But I manage pretty well, getting in great stocks from Liverpool, and meat from our own family butcher. I can assure you, the hot dinners the cook turns out are by no means to be despised.'
'Do you taste each dish as it goes in?'
'I was very scrupulous, at first, in confining myself to the buying, and even in that I obeyed the men's orders rather than my own judgment. At one time, the beef was too large, at another the mutton was not fat enough. I think they saw how careful I was not to intrude my own ideas upon them; so, one day, some of the men - my friend Higgins among them - asked me to come in and take a snack. It was a very busy day, but I saw that the men would be hurt if I didn't, so I went in, and I never made a better dinner in my life. I told them how much I'd enjoyed it; and for some time after I'd be met by these men, with a "Master, there's hot-pot for dinner today, win yo' come?"'
'I should think you were rather a restraint on your hosts' conversation. They can't abuse the masters while you're there.'
'Well! if any of the old disputes came up, I would certainly speak out my mind next hot-pot day. But you are hardly acquainted with our Darkshire fellows, for all you're a Darkshire man yourself. They have such a sense of humour, and such a racy mode of expression! I am getting to know some of them now, and they talk pretty freely before me.'
'Nothing like the act of eating for equalising men. Will you accept a ten pound note towards your marketing, and give the poor fellows a feast?'
'Thank you; but I'd rather not. They pay me rent for the oven and cooking-places at the back of the mill. I don't want it to fall into a charity. I don't want donations. But by-and-by we shall meet with plenty of stumbling-blocks, no doubt.'