“I’m afraid we’ve done too much,” said Mr.

“I’m afraid we’ve done too much,” said Mr. Bell. “You’re suffering now from having lived so long in that Milton air.”

“I am tired,” said Mr. Hale. “But it is not Milton air. I’m fifty-five years of age, and that little fact of itself accounts for any loss of strength.”

“Nonsense! I’m upwards of sixty, and feel no loss of strength, either bodily or mental. Don’t let me hear you talking so. Fifty-five! why, you’re quite a young man.”

Mr. Hale shook his head. “These last few years!” said he. But after a minute’s pause, he raised himself from his half recumbent position, in one of Mr. Bell’s luxurious easy-chairs, and said with a kind of trembling earnestness:

“Bell! you’re not to think, that if I could have foreseen all that would come of my change of opinion, and my resignation of my living—no! not even if I could have known how she would have suffered,—that I would undo it—the act of open acknowledgment that I no longer held the same faith as the church in which I was a priest. As I think now, even if I could have foreseen that cruellest martyrdom of suffering, through the sufferings of one whom I loved, I would have done just the same as far as that step of openly leaving the church went. I might have done differently, and acted more wisely, in all that I subsequently did for my family. But I don’t think God endued me with over-much wisdom or strength,” he added, falling back into his old position.

Mr. Bell blew his nose ostentatiously before answering. Then he said:

“He gave you strength to do what your conscience told you was right; and I don’t see that we need any higher or holier strength than that; or wisdom either. I know I have not that much; and yet men set me down in their fool’s books as a wise man; an independent character; strong-minded, and all that cant. The veriest idiot who obeys his own simple law of right, if it be but in wiping his shoes on a door-mat, is wiser and stronger than I. But what gulls men are!”

There was a pause. Mr. Hale spoke first, in continuation of his thought:

“About Margaret.”

“Well! about Margaret. What then?”

“If I die——”

“Nonsense!”

“What will become of her—I often think? I suppose the Lennoxes will ask her to live with them. I try to think they will. Her Aunt Shaw loved her very well in her own quiet way; but she forgets to love the absent.”

“A very common fault. What sort of people are the Lennoxes?”

“He, handsome, fluent, and agreeable. Edith, a sweet spoiled beauty. Margaret loves her with all her heart, and Edith with as much of her heart as she can spare.”

“Now, Hale; you know that girl of yours has got pretty nearly all my heart. I told you that before. Of course, as your daughter, as my god-daughter, I took great interest in her before I saw her the last time. But this visit that I paid to you at Milton made me her slave. I went, a willing old victim, following the car of the conqueror. For, indeed, she looks as grand and serene as one who has struggled, and may be struggling, and yet has the victory secure in sight. Yes, in spite of all her present anxieties, that was the look on her face. And so, all I have is at her service, if she needs it; and will be hers, whether she will or no, when I die. Moreover, I myself, will be her preux chevalier, sixty and gouty though I be. Seriously, old friend, your daughter shall be my principal charge in life, and all the help that either my wit or my wisdom or my willing heart can give, shall be hers. I don’t choose her out as a subject for fretting. Something, I know of old, you must have to worry yourself about, or you wouldn’t be happy. But you’re going to outlive me by many a long year. You, spare, thin men are always tempting and always cheating Death! It’s the stout, florid fellows like me, that always go off first.”

If Mr. Bell had had a prophetic eye he might have seen the torch all but inverted, and the angel with the grave and composed face standing very nigh, beckoning to his friend. That night Mr. Hale laid his head down upon the pillow on which it never more should stir with life. The servant who entered his room in the morning, received no answer to his speech; drew near the bed, and saw the calm, beautiful face lying white and cold under the ineffaceable seal of death. The attitude was exquisitely easy; there had been no pain—no struggle. The action of the heart must have ceased as he lay down.

Mr. Bell was stunned by the shock; and only recovered when the time came for being angry at every suggestion of his man’s.

“A coroner’s inquest? Pooh. You don’t think I poisoned him! Dr. Forbes says it is just the natural end of a heart complaint. Poor old Hale! You wore out that tender heart of yours before its time. Poor old friend! how he talked of his—— Wallis, pack up a carpet-bag for me in five minutes. Here have I been talking. Pack it up, I say. I must go to Milton by the next train.”

The bag was packed, the cab ordered, the railway reached, in twenty minutes from the time of this decision. The London train whizzed by, drew back some yards, and in Mr. Bell was hurried by the impatient guard. He threw himself back in his seat, to try, with closed eyes, to understand how one in life yesterday could be dead to-day; and shortly tears stole out between his grizzled eye-lashes, at the feeling of which he opened his keen eyes, and looked as severely cheerful as his set determination could make him. He was not going to blubber before a set of strangers. Not he!

There was no set of strangers, only one sitting far from him on the same side. By-and-by Mr. Bell peered at him, to discover what manner of man it was that might have been observing his emotion; and behind the great sheet of the outspread “Times,” he recognized Mr. Thornton.

“Why, Thornton! is that you?” said he, removing hastily to a closer proximity. He shook Mr. Thornton vehemently by the hand, until the gripe ended in a sudden relaxation, for the hand was wanted to wipe away tears. He had last seen Mr. Thornton in his friend Hale’s company.

“I’m going to Milton, bound on a melancholy errand. Going to break to Hale’s daughter the news of his sudden death!”

“Death! Mr. Hale dead!”

“Ay; I keep saying it to myself, ‘Hale is dead!’ but it doesn’t make it any the more real. Hale is dead for all that. He went to bed well, to all appearance, last night, and was quite cold this morning when my servant went to call him.”

“Where? I don’t understand!”

“At Oxford. He came to stay with me: hadn’t been in Oxford this seventeen years—and this is the end of it.”

Not one word was spoken for above a quarter of an hour. Then Mr. Thornton said:

“And she!” and stopped full short.

“Margaret you mean. Yes! I am going to tell her. Poor fellow! how full his thoughts were of her all last night! Good God! Last night only. And how immeasurably distant he is now! But I take Margaret as my child for his sake. I said last night I would take her for her own sake. Well, I take her for both.”

Mr. Thornton made one or two fruitless attempts to speak, before he could get out the words:

“What will become of her?”

“I rather fancy there will be two people waiting for her: myself for one. I would take a live dragon into my house to live, if by hiring such a chaperon, and setting up an establishment of my own, I could make my old age happy with having Margaret for a daughter. But there are those Lennoxes!”

“Who are they?” asked Mr. Thornton with trembling interest.

“Oh, smart London people, who very likely will think that they’ve the best right to her. Captain Lennox married her cousin—the girl she was brought up with. Good enough people, I dare say. And there’s her Aunt, Mrs. Shaw. There might be a way open, perhaps, by my offering to marry that worthy lady! but that would be quite a pis aller. And then there’s that brother!”

“What brother? A brother of her aunt’s?”

“No, no; a clever Lennox (the captain’s a fool, you must understand); a young barrister, who will be setting his cap at Margaret. I know he has had her in his mind these five years or more; one of his chums told me as much; and he was only kept back by want of fortune. Now that will be done away with.”

“How?” asked Mr. Thornton, too earnestly curious to be aware of the impertinence of his question.

“Why, she’ll have my money at my death. And if this Henry Lennox is half good enough for her, and she likes him—well! I might find another way of getting a home through a marriage. I’m dreadfully afraid of being tempted, at an unguarded moment, by her aunt.”

Neither Mr. Bell nor Mr. Thornton was in a laughing humour; so the oddity of any of the speeches which the former made was unnoticed by them. Mr. Bell whistled, without emitting any sound beyond a long hissing breath; changed his seat, without finding comfort or rest; while Mr. Thornton sat immovably still, his eyes fixed on one spot in the newspaper, which he had taken up in order to give himself leisure to think.

“Where have you been?” asked Mr. Bell, at length.

“To Havre. Trying to detect the secret of the great rise in the price of cotton.”

“Ugh! Cotton, and speculations, and smoke, well-cleansed and well-cared-for machinery, and unwashed and neglected hands. Poor old Hale! Poor old Hale! If you could have known the change which it was to him from Helstone. Do you know the New Forest at all?”

“Yes.” (Very shortly.)

“Then you can fancy the difference between it and Milton. What part were you in? Were you ever at Helstone? a little picturesque village, like some in the Odenwald? You know Helstone?”

“I have seen it. It was a great change to leave it and come to Milton.”

He took up his newspaper with a determined air, as if resolved to avoid further conversation; and Mr. Bell was fain to resort to his former occupation of trying to find out how he could best break the news to Margaret.

She was at an upstairs window; she saw him alight; she guessed the truth with an instinctive flash. She stood in the middle of the drawing-room, as if arrested in her first impulse to rush downstairs, and as if by the same restraining thought she had been turned to stone; so white and immovable was she.

“Oh! don’t tell me! I know it from your face! You would have sent—you would not have left him—if he were alive! Oh, papa, papa!”

CHAPTER XLII.

ALONE! ALONE!

“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 inertiæ 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: