North and South

IX.

BREATHING TRANQUILLITY.

“And down the sunny beach she paces slowly,
With many doubtful pauses by the way;
Grief hath an influence so hushed and holy.”
HOOD.

“Is not Margaret the heiress?” whispered Edith to her husband, as they
were in their room alone at night after the sad journey to Oxford. She
had pulled his tall head down, and stood upon tiptoe, and implored him
not to be shocked, before she ventured to ask this question. Captain
Lennox was, however, quite in the dark; if he had ever heard, he had
forgotten; it could not be much that a Fellow of a small College had to
leave; but he had never wanted her to pay for her board; and two hundred
and fifty pounds a year was something ridiculous, considering that she
did not take wine. Edith came down upon her feet a little bit sadder;
with a romance blown to pieces.

A week afterwards, she came prancing towards her husband, and made him a
low curtsey:

“I am right, and you are wrong, most noble Captain. Margaret has had a
lawyer’s letter, and she is residuary legatee—the legacies being about
two thousand pounds, and the remainder about forty thousand, at the
present value of property in Milton.”

“Indeed! and how does she take her good fortune?”

“Oh, it seems she knew she was to have it all along; only she had no
idea it was so much. She looks very white and pale, and says she’s
afraid of it; but that’s nonsense, you know, and will soon go off. I
left mamma pouring congratulations down her throat, and stole away to
tell you.”

It seemed to be supposed, by general consent, that the most natural
thing was to consider Mr. Lennox henceforward as Margaret’s legal
adviser. She was so entirely ignorant of all forms of business that in
nearly everything she had to refer to him. He chose out her attorney; he
came to her with papers to be signed. He was never so happy as when
teaching her of what all these mysteries of the law were the signs and
types.

“Henry,” said Edith, one day, archly; “do you know what I hope and
expect all these long conversations with Margaret will end in?”

“No, I don’t,” said he, reddening. “And I desire you not to tell me.”

“Oh, very well; then I need not tell Sholto not to ask Mr. Montagu so
often to the house.”

“Just as you choose,” said he with forced coolness. “What you are
thinking of may or may not happen; but this time, before I commit
myself, I will see my ground clear. Ask whom you choose. It may not be
very civil, Edith, but if you meddle in it you will mar it. She has been
very farouche with me for a long time; and is only just beginning to
thaw a little from her Zenobia ways. She has the making of a Cleopatra
in her, if only she were a little more pagan.”

“For my part,” said Edith, a little maliciously, “I am very glad she is
a Christian. I know so very few!”

There was no Spain for Margaret that autumn; although to the last she
hoped that some fortunate occasion would call Frederick to Paris,
whither she could easily have met with a convoy. Instead of Cadiz, she
had to content herself with Cromer. To that place her aunt Shaw and the
Lennoxes were bound. They had all along wished her to accompany them,
and, consequently, with their characters, they made but lazy efforts to
forward her own separate wish. Perhaps Cromer was, in one sense of the
expression, the best for her. She needed bodily strengthening and
bracing as well as rest.

Among other hopes that had vanished, was the hope, the trust she had
had, that Mr. Bell would have given Mr. Thornton the simple facts of the
family circumstances which had preceded the unfortunate accident that
led to Leonards’ death. Whatever opinion—however changed it might be
from what Mr. Thornton had once entertained, she had wished it to be
based upon a true understanding of what she had done, and why she had
done it. It would have been a pleasure to her: would have given her rest
on a point on which she should now all her life be restless, unless she
could resolve not to think upon it. It was now so long after the time of
these occurrences, that there was no possible way of explaining them
save the one which she had lost by Mr. Bell’s death. She might just
submit, like many another, to be misunderstood; but, though reasoning
herself into the belief that in this hers was no uncommon lot, her heart
did not ache the less with longing that some time—years and years
hence—before he died at any rate, he might know how much she had been
tempted. She thought that she did not want to hear that all was
explained to him, if only she could be sure that he would know. But this
wish was vain, like so many others; and when she had schooled herself
into this conviction, she turned with all her heart and strength to the
life that lay immediately before her, and resolved to strive and make
the best of that.

She used to sit long hours upon the beach, gazing intently on the waves
as they chafed with perpetual motion against the pebbly shore,—or she
looked out upon the more distant heave, and sparkle against the sky, and
heard, without being conscious of hearing, the eternal psalm, which went
up continually. She was soothed without knowing how or why. Listlessly
she sat there, on the ground, her hands clasped round her knees, while
her aunt Shaw did small shoppings, and Edith and Captain Lennox rode far
and wide on shore and inland. The nurses, sauntering on with their
charges, would pass and repass her, and wonder in whispers what she
could find to look at so long, day after day. And when the family
gathered at dinner-time, Margaret was so silent and absorbed that Edith
voted her moped, and hailed a proposal of her husband’s with great
satisfaction, that Mr. Henry Lennox should be asked to take Cromer for a
week, on his return from Scotland in October.

But all this time for thought enabled Margaret to put events in their
right places, as to origin and significance, both as regarded her past
life and her future. Those hours by the seaside were not lost, as any
one might have seen who had had the perception to read, or the care to
understand, the look that Margaret’s face was gradually acquiring. Mr.
Henry Lennox was excessively struck by the change.

“The sea has done Miss Hale an immense deal of good, I should fancy,”
said he, when she first left the room after his arrival in their family
circle. “She looks ten years younger than she did in Harley Street.”

“That’s the bonnet I got her!” said Edith, triumphantly. “I knew it
would suit her the moment I saw it.”

“I beg your pardon,” said Mr. Lennox, in the half-contemptuous,
half-indulgent tone he generally used to Edith. “But I believe I know
the difference between the charms of a dress and the charms of a woman.
No mere bonnet would have made Miss Hale’s eyes so lustrous and yet so
soft, or her lips so ripe and red—and her face altogether so full of
peace and light.—She is like, and yet more,”—he dropped his
voice,—“like the Margaret Hale of Helstone.”

From this time the clever and ambitious man bent all his powers to
gaining Margaret. He loved her sweet beauty. He saw the latent sweep of
her mind, which could easily (he thought) be led to embrace all the
objects on which he had set his heart. He looked upon her fortune only
as a part of the complete and superb character of herself and her
position; yet he was fully aware of the rise which it would immediately
enable him, the poor barrister, to take. Eventually he would earn such
success, and such honours, as would enable him to pay her back, with
interest, that first advance in wealth which he should owe to her. He
had been to Milton on business connected with her property, on his
return from Scotland; and with the quick eye of a skilled lawyer, ready
ever to take in and weigh contingencies, he had seen that much
additional value was yearly accruing to the lands and tenements which
she owned in that prosperous and increasing town. He was glad to find
that the present relationship between Margaret and himself, of client
and legal adviser, was gradually superseding the recollection of that
unlucky, mismanaged day at Helstone. He had thus unusual opportunities
of intimate intercourse with her, besides those that arose from the
connection between the families.

Margaret was only too willing to listen as long as he talked of Milton,
though he had seen none of the people whom she more especially knew. It
had been the tone with her aunt and cousin to speak of Milton with
dislike and contempt; just such feelings as Margaret was ashamed to
remember she had expressed and felt on first going to live there. But
Mr. Lennox almost exceeded Margaret in his appreciation of the
character of Milton and its inhabitants. Their energy, their power,
their indomitable courage in struggling and fighting; their lurid
vividness of existence, captivated and arrested his attention. He was
never tired of talking about them; and had never perceived how selfish
and material were too many of the ends they proposed to themselves as
the result of all their mighty, untiring endeavour, till Margaret, even
in the midst of her gratification, had the candour to point this out, as
the tainting sin in so much that was noble and to be admired. Still,
when other subjects palled upon her, and she gave but short answers to
many questions, Henry Lennox found out that an enquiry as to some
Darkshire peculiarity of character called back the light into her eye,
the glow into her cheek.

When they returned to town, Margaret fulfilled one of her sea-side
resolves, and took her life into her own hands. Before they went to
Cromer, she had been as docile to her aunt’s laws as if she were still
the scared little stranger who cried herself to sleep that first night
in the Harley Street nursery. But she had learnt, in those solemn hours
of thought, that she herself must one day answer for her own life, and
what she had done with it; and she tried to settle that most difficult
problem for woman, how much was to be utterly merged in obedience to
authority, and how much might be set apart for freedom in working. Mrs.
Shaw was as good-tempered as could be; and Edith had inherited this
charming domestic quality; Margaret herself had probably the worst
temper of the three, for her quick perceptions and over-lively
imagination made her hasty, and her early isolation from sympathy had
made her proud: but she had an indescribable childlike sweetness of
heart, which made her manners, even in her rarely wilful moods,
irresistible of old; and now, chastened even by what the world called
her good fortune, she charmed her reluctant aunt into acquiescence with
her will. So Margaret gained the acknowledgment of her right to follow
her own ideas of duty.

“Only don’t be strong-minded,” pleaded Edith. “Mamma wants you to have a
footman of your own; and I’m sure you’re very welcome, for they’re great
plagues. Only to please me, darling, don’t go and have a strong mind;
it’s the only thing I ask. Footman or no footman, don’t be
strong-minded.”

“Don’t be afraid, Edith. I’ll faint on your hands at the servants’
dinner-time, the very first opportunity; and then, what with Sholto
playing with the fire, and the baby crying, you’ll begin to wish for a
strong-minded woman, equal to any emergency.”

“And you’ll not grow too good to joke and be merry?”

“Not I. I shall be merrier than I have ever been, now I have got my own
way.”

“And you’ll not go a figure, but let me buy your dresses for you?”

“Indeed I mean to buy them for myself. You shall come with me if you
like; but no one can please me but myself.”

“Oh! I was afraid you’d dress in brown and dust-colour, not to show the
dirt you’ll pick up in all those places. I’m glad you’re going to keep
one or two vanities, just by way of specimens of the old Adam.”

“I am going to be just the same, Edith, if you and my aunt could but
fancy so. Only as I have neither husband nor child to give me natural
duties, I must make myself some, in addition to ordering my gowns.”

In the family conclave, which was made up of Edith, her mother, and her
husband, it was decided that perhaps all these plans of hers would only
secure her the more for Henry Lennox. They kept her out of the way of
other friends who might have been eligible sons or brothers; and it was
also agreed that she never seemed to take much pleasure in the society
of any one but Henry, out of their own family. The other admirers,
attracted by her appearance or the reputation of her fortune, were swept
away, by her unconscious smiling disdain, into the paths frequented by
other beauties less fastidious, or other heiresses with a larger amount
of gold. Henry and she grew slowly into closer intimacy; but neither he
nor she were people to brook the slightest notice of their proceedings.