North and South

VIII.

“NE’ER TO BE FOUND AGAIN.”

“My own, my father’s friend!
I cannot part with thee!
I ne’er have shown, thou ne’er hast known,
How dear thou art to me.”
ANON.

The elements of the dinner-parties which Mrs. Lennox gave, were these;
her friends contributed the beauty, Captain Lennox the easy knowledge of
the subjects of the day; and Mr. Henry Lennox, and the sprinkling of
rising men who were received as his friends, brought the wit, the
cleverness, the keen and extensive knowledge of which they knew well
enough how to avail themselves without seeming pedantic, or burdening
the rapid flow of conversation.

These dinners were delightful; but even here Margaret’s dissatisfaction
found her out. Every talent, every feeling, every acquirement; nay, even
every tendency towards virtue, was used up as materials for fireworks;
the hidden, sacred fire, exhausted itself in sparkle and crackle. They
talked about art in a merely sensuous way, dwelling on outside effects,
instead of allowing themselves to learn what it has to teach. They
lashed themselves up into an enthusiasm about high subjects in company,
and never thought about them when they were alone; they squandered their
capabilities of appreciation into a mere flow of appropriate words. One
day, after the gentlemen had come up into the drawing-room, Mr. Lennox
drew near to Margaret, and addressed her in almost the first voluntary
words he had spoken to her since she had returned to live in Harley
Street.

“You did not look pleased at what Shirley was saying at dinner.”

“Didn’t I? My face must be very expressive,” replied Margaret.

“It always was. It has not lost the trick of being eloquent.”

“I did not like,” said Margaret, hastily, “his way of advocating what he
knew to be wrong—so glaringly wrong—even in jest.”

“But it was very clever. How every word told! Did you remember the happy
epithets?”

“Yes.”

“And despise them, you would like to add. Pray don’t scruple, though he
is my friend.”

“There! that is the exact tone in you, that”—she stopped short.

He listened for a moment to see if she would finish her sentence; but
she only reddened, and turned away; before she did so, however, she
heard him say, in a very low, clear voice,—

“If my tones, or modes of thought, are what you dislike, will you do me
the justice to tell me so, and so give me the chance of learning to
please you.”

All these weeks there was no intelligence of Mr. Bell’s going to Milton.
He had spoken of it at Helstone as of a journey which he might have to
take in a very short time from then; but he must have transacted his
business by writing. Margaret thought, ere now, and she knew that if he
could, he would avoid going to a place which he disliked, and moreover
would little understand the secret importance which she affixed to the
explanation that could only be given by word of mouth. She knew that he
would feel that it was necessary that it should be done; but whether in
summer, autumn, or winter, it would signify very little. It was now
August, and there had been no mention of the Spanish journey to which he
had alluded to Edith, and Margaret tried to reconcile herself to the
fading away of this illusion.

But one morning she received a letter, saying that next week he meant to
come up to town; he wanted to see her about a plan which he had in his
head; and, moreover, he intended to treat himself to a little doctoring,
as he had begun to come round to her opinion, that it would be
pleasanter to think that his health was more in fault than he, when he
found himself irritable and cross. There was altogether a tone of forced
cheerfulness in the letter, as Margaret noticed afterwards; but at the
time her attention was taken up by Edith’s exclamations.

“Coming up to town! Oh dear! and I am so worn out by the heat that I
don’t believe I have strength enough in me for another dinner. Besides,
everybody has left but our dear stupid selves, who can’t settle where to
go to. There would be nobody to meet him.”

“I’m sure he would much rather come and dine with us quite alone than
with the most agreeable strangers you could pick up. Besides, if he is
not well he won’t wish for invitations. I am glad he has owned it at
last. I was sure he was ill from the whole tone of his letters, and yet
he would not answer me when I asked him, and I had no third person to
whom I could apply for news.”

“Oh! he is not very ill, or he would not think of Spain.”

“He never mentions Spain.”

“No! but his plan that is to be proposed evidently relates to that. But
would you really go in such weather as this?”

“Oh, it will get cooler every day. Yes! Think of it. I am only afraid I
have thought and wished too much—in that absorbing wilful way which is
sure to be disappointed—or else gratified, to the letter, while in the
spirit it gives no pleasure.”

“But that’s superstitious, I’m sure, Margaret.”

“No, I don’t think it is. Only it ought to warn me, and check me from
giving way to such passionate wishes. It is a sort of ‘Give me children,
or else I die.’ I’m afraid my cry is, ‘Let me go to Cadiz, or else I
die.’”

“My dear Margaret! You’ll be persuaded to stay there; and then what
shall I do? Oh! I wish I could find somebody for you to marry here, that
I could be sure of you!”

“I shall never marry.”

“Nonsense, and double nonsense! Why, as Sholto says, you’re such an
attraction to the house, that he knows ever so many men who will be glad
to visit here next year for your sake.”

Margaret drew herself up haughtily. “Do you know, Edith, I sometimes
think your Corfu life has taught you——”

“Well!”

“Just a shade or two of coarseness.”

Edith began to sob so bitterly, and to declare so vehemently that
Margaret had lost all love for her, and no longer looked upon her as a
friend, that Margaret came to think that she had expressed too harsh an
opinion for the relief of her own wounded pride, and ended by being
Edith’s slave for the rest of the day; while that little lady, overcome
by wounded feeling, lay like a victim on the sofa, heaving occasionally
a profound sigh, till at last she fell asleep.

Mr. Bell did not make his appearance even on the day to which he had for
a second time deferred his visit. The next morning there came a letter
from Wallis, his servant, stating that his master had not been feeling
well for some time, which had been the true reason of his putting off
his journey; and that at the very time when he should have set out for
London, he had been seized with an apoplectic fit; it was, indeed,
Wallis added, the opinion of the medical men—that he could not survive
the night; and more than probable, that by the time Miss Hale received
this letter his poor master would be no more.

Margaret received this letter at breakfast-time, and turned very pale as
she read it; then, silently putting into Edith’s hands, she left the
room.

Edith was terribly shocked as she read it, and cried in a sobbing,
frightened, childish way, much to her husband’s distress. Mrs. Shaw was
breakfasting in her own room, and upon him devolved the task of
reconciling his wife to the near contact into which she seemed to be
brought with death, for the first time that she could remember in her
life. Here was a man who was to have dined with them to-day lying dead
or dying instead! It was some time before she could think of Margaret.
Then she started up, and followed her upstairs into her room. Dixon was
packing up a few toilette articles, and Margaret was hastily putting on
her bonnet, shedding tears all the time, and her hands trembling so that
she could hardly tie the strings.

“Oh, dear Margaret! how shocking! What are you doing? Are you going
out? Sholto would telegraph or do anything you like.”

“I am going to Oxford. There is a train in half-an-hour. Dixon has
offered to go with me, but I could have gone by myself. I must see him
again. Besides, he may be better, and want some care. He has been like a
father to me. Don’t stop me, Edith.”

“But I must. Mamma won’t like it at all. Come and ask her about it,
Margaret. You don’t know where you’re going. I should not mind if he had
a house of his own; but in his Fellow’s rooms! Come to mamma, and do ask
her before you go. It will not take a minute.”

Margaret yielded, and lost her train. In the suddenness of the event,
Mrs. Shaw became bewildered and hysterical, and so the precious time
slipped by. But there was another train in a couple of hours; and after
various discussions on propriety and impropriety, it was decided that
Captain Lennox should accompany Margaret, as the one thing to which she
was constant was her resolution to go, alone or otherwise, by the next
train, whatever might be said of the propriety or impropriety of the
step. Her father’s friend, her own friend, was lying at the point of
death; and the thought of this came upon her with such vividness, that
she was surprised herself at the firmness with which she asserted
something of her right to independence of action; and five minutes
before the time of starting, she found herself sitting in a railway
carriage opposite to Captain Lennox. It was always a comfort to her to
think that she had gone, though it was only to hear that he had died in
the night. She saw the rooms that he had occupied, and associated them
ever after most fondly in her memory with the idea of her father, and
his one cherished and faithful friend.

They had promised Edith before starting, that if all had ended as they
feared, they would return to dinner; so that long, lingering look around
the room in which her father had died, had to be interrupted, and a
quiet farewell taken of the kind old face that had so often come out
with pleasant words, and merry quips and cranks.

Captain Lennox fell asleep on their journey home; and Margaret could cry
at leisure, and bethink her of this fatal year, and all the woes it had
brought to her. No sooner was she fully aware of one loss than another
came—not to supersede her grief for the one before, but to re-open
wounds and feelings scarcely healed. But at the sound of the tender
voices of her aunt and Edith, of merry little Sholto’s glee at her
arrival, and at the sight of the well-lighted rooms, with their
mistress, pretty in her paleness and her eager sorrowful interest,
Margaret roused herself from her heavy trance of almost superstitious
hopelessness, and began to feel that even around her joy and gladness
might gather. She had Edith’s place on the sofa; Sholto was taught to
carry Aunt Margaret’s cup of tea very carefully to her; and by the time
she went up to dress, she could thank God for having spared her dear old
friend a long or a painful illness.