_ CHAPTER V - DECISION
'I ask Thee for a thoughtful love,
Through constant watching wise,
To meet the glad with joyful smiles,
And to wipe the weeping eyes;
And a heart at leisure from itself
To soothe and sympathise.'
ANON.
Margaret made a good listener to all her mother's little plans
for adding some small comforts to the lot of the poorer
parishioners. She could not help listening, though each new
project was a stab to her heart. By the time the frost had set
in, they should be far away from Helstone. Old Simon's rheumatism
might be bad and his eyesight worse; there would be no one to go
and read to him, and comfort him with little porringers of broth
and good red flannel: or if there was, it would be a stranger,
and the old man would watch in vain for her. Mary Domville's
little crippled boy would crawl in vain to the door and look for
her coming through the forest. These poor friends would never
understand why she had forsaken them; and there were many others
besides. 'Papa has always spent the income he derived from his
living in the parish. I am, perhaps, encroaching upon the next
dues, but the winter is likely to be severe, and our poor old
people must be helped.'
'Oh, mamma, let us do all we can,' said Margaret eagerly, not
seeing the prudential side of the question, only grasping at the
idea that they were rendering such help for the last time; 'we
may not be here long.'
'Do you feel ill, my darling?' asked Mrs. Hale, anxiously,
misunderstanding Margaret's hint of the uncertainty of their stay
at Helstone. 'You look pale and tired. It is this soft, damp,
unhealthy air.'
'No--no, mamma, it is not that: it is delicious air. It smells of
the freshest, purest fragrance, after the smokiness of Harley
Street. But I am tired: it surely must be near bedtime.'
'Not far off--it is half-past nine. You had better go to bed at
dear. Ask Dixon for some gruel. I will come and see you as soon
as you are in bed. I am afraid you have taken cold; or the bad
air from some of the stagnant ponds--'
'Oh, mamma,' said Margaret, faintly smiling as she kissed her
mother, 'I am quite well--don't alarm yourself about me; I am
only tired.'
Margaret went upstairs. To soothe her mother's anxiety she
submitted to a basin of gruel. She was lying languidly in bed
when Mrs. Hale came up to make some last inquiries and kiss her
before going to her own room for the night. But the instant she
heard her mother's door locked, she sprang out of bed, and
throwing her dressing-gown on, she began to pace up and down the
room, until the creaking of one of the boards reminded her that
she must make no noise. She went and curled herself up on the
window-seat in the small, deeply-recessed window. That morning
when she had looked out, her heart had danced at seeing the
bright clear lights on the church tower, which foretold a fine
and sunny day. This evening--sixteen hours at most had past
by--she sat down, too full of sorrow to cry, but with a dull cold
pain, which seemed to have pressed the youth and buoyancy out of
her heart, never to return. Mr. Henry Lennox's visit--his
offer--was like a dream, a thing beside her actual life. The hard
reality was, that her father had so admitted tempting doubts into
his mind as to become a schismatic--an outcast; all the changes
consequent upon this grouped themselves around that one great
blighting fact.
She looked out upon the dark-gray lines of the church tower,
square and straight in the centre of the view, cutting against
the deep blue transparent depths beyond, into which she gazed,
and felt that she might gaze for ever, seeing at every moment
some farther distance, and yet no sign of God! It seemed to her
at the moment, as if the earth was more utterly desolate than if
girt in by an iron dome, behind which there might be the
ineffaceable peace and glory of the Almighty: those never-ending
depths of space, in their still serenity, were more mocking to
her than any material bounds could be--shutting in the cries of
earth's sufferers, which now might ascend into that infinite
splendour of vastness and be lost--lost for ever, before they
reached His throne. In this mood her father came in unheard. The
moonlight was strong enough to let him see his daughter in her
unusual place and attitude. He came to her and touched her
shoulder before she was aware that he was there.
'Margaret, I heard you were up. I could not help coming in to ask
you to pray with me--to say the Lord's Prayer; that will do good
to both of us.'
Mr. Hale and Margaret knelt by the window-seat--he looking up,
she bowed down in humble shame. God was there, close around them,
hearing her father's whispered words. Her father might be a
heretic; but had not she, in her despairing doubts not five
minutes before, shown herself a far more utter sceptic? She spoke
not a word, but stole to bed after her father had left her, like
a child ashamed of its fault. If the world was full of perplexing
problems she would trust, and only ask to see the one step
needful for the hour. Mr. Lennox--his visit, his proposal--the
remembrance of which had been so rudely pushed aside by the
subsequent events of the day--haunted her dreams that night. He
was climbing up some tree of fabulous height to reach the branch
whereon was slung her bonnet: he was falling, and she was
struggling to save him, but held back by some invisible powerful
hand. He was dead. And yet, with a shifting of the scene, she was
once more in the Harley Street drawing-room, talking to him as of
old, and still with a consciousness all the time that she had
seen him killed by that terrible fall.
Miserable, unresting night! Ill preparation for the coming day!
She awoke with a start, unrefreshed, and conscious of some
reality worse even than her feverish dreams. It all came back
upon her; not merely the sorrow, but the terrible discord in the
sorrow. Where, to what distance apart, had her father wandered,
led by doubts which were to her temptations of the Evil One? She
longed to ask, and yet would not have heard for all the world.
The fine Crisp morning made her mother feel particularly well and
happy at breakfast-time. She talked on, planning village
kindnesses, unheeding the silence of her husband and the
monosyllabic answers of Margaret. Before the things were cleared
away, Mr. Hale got up; he leaned one hand on the table, as if to
support himself:
'I shall not be at home till evening. I am going to Bracy Common,
and will ask Farmer Dobson to give me something for dinner. I
shall be back to tea at seven.' He did not look at either of
them, but Margaret knew what he meant. By seven the announcement
must be made to her mother. Mr. Hale would have delayed making it
till half-past six, but Margaret was of different stuff. She
could not bear the impending weight on her mind all the day long:
better get the worst over; the day would be too short to comfort
her mother. But while she stood by the window, thinking how to
begin, and waiting for the servant to have left the room, her
mother had gone up-stairs to put on her things to go to the
school. She came down ready equipped, in a brisker mood than
usual.
'Mother, come round the garden with me this morning; just one
turn,' said Margaret, putting her arm round Mrs. Hale's waist.
They passed through the open window. Mrs. Hale spoke--said
something--Margaret could not tell what. Her eye caught on a bee
entering a deep-belled flower: when that bee flew forth with his
spoil she would begin--that should be the sign. Out he came.
'Mamma! Papa is going to leave Helstone!' she blurted forth.
'He's going to leave the Church, and live in Milton-Northern.'
There were the three hard facts hardly spoken.
'What makes you say so?' asked Mrs. Hale, in a surprised
incredulous voice. 'Who has been telling you such nonsense?'
'Papa himself,' said Margaret, longing to say something gentle
and consoling, but literally not knowing how. They were close to
a garden-bench. Mrs. Hale sat down, and began to cry.
'I don't understand you,' she said. 'Either you have made some
great mistake, or I don't quite understand you.'
'No, mother, I have made no mistake. Papa has written to the
bishop, saying that he has such doubts that he cannot
conscientiously remain a priest of the Church of England, and
that he must give up Helstone. He has also consulted Mr.
Bell--Frederick's godfather, you know, mamma; and it is arranged
that we go to live in Milton-Northern.' Mrs. Hale looked up in
Margaret's face all the time she was speaking these words: the
shadow on her countenance told that she, at least, believed in
the truth of what she said.
'I don't think it can be true,' said Mrs. Hale, at length. 'He
would surely have told me before it came to this.'
It came strongly upon Margaret's mind that her mother ought to
have been told: that whatever her faults of discontent and
repining might have been, it was an error in her father to have
left her to learn his change of opinion, and his approaching
change of life, from her better-informed child. Margaret sat down
by her mother, and took her unresisting head on her breast,
bending her own soft cheeks down caressingly to touch her face.
'Dear, darling mamma! we were so afraid of giving you pain. Papa
felt so acutely--you know you are not strong, and there must have
been such terrible suspense to go through.'
'When did he tell you, Margaret?'
'Yesterday, only yesterday,' replied Margaret, detecting the
jealousy which prompted the inquiry. 'Poor papa!'--trying to
divert her mother's thoughts into compassionate sympathy for all
her father had gone through. Mrs. Hale raised her head.
'What does he mean by having doubts?' she asked. 'Surely, he does
not mean that he thinks differently--that he knows better than
the Church.' Margaret shook her head, and the tears came into her
eyes, as her mother touched the bare nerve of her own regret.
'Can't the bishop set him right?' asked Mrs. Hale, half
impatiently.
'I'm afraid not,' said Margaret. 'But I did not ask. I could not
bear to hear what he might answer. It is all settled at any rate.
He is going to leave Helstone in a fortnight. I am not sure if he
did not say he had sent in his deed of resignation.'
'In a fortnight!' exclaimed Mrs. Hale, 'I do think this is very
strange--not at all right. I call it very unfeeling,' said she,
beginning to take relief in tears. 'He has doubts, you say, and
gives up his living, and all without consulting me. I dare say,
if he had told me his doubts at the first I could have nipped
them in the bud.'
Mistaken as Margaret felt her father's conduct to have been, she
could not bear to hear it blamed by her mother. She knew that his
very reserve had originated in a tenderness for her, which might
be cowardly, but was not unfeeling.
'I almost hoped you might have been glad to leave Helstone,
mamma,' said she, after a pause. 'You have never been well in
this air, you know.'
'You can't think the smoky air of a manufacturing town, all
chimneys and dirt like Milton-Northern, would be better than this
air, which is pure and sweet, if it is too soft and relaxing.
Fancy living in the middle of factories, and factory people!
Though, of course, if your father leaves the Church, we shall not
be admitted into society anywhere. It will be such a disgrace to
us! Poor dear Sir John! It is well he is not alive to see what
your father has come to! Every day after dinner, when I was a
girl, living with your aunt Shaw, at Beresford Court, Sir John
used to give for the first toast--"Church and King, and down with
the Rump."'
Margaret was glad that her mother's thoughts were turned away
from the fact of her husband's silence to her on the point which
must have been so near his heart. Next to the serious vital
anxiety as to the nature of her father's doubts, this was the one
circumstance of the case that gave Margaret the most pain.
'You know, we have very little society here, mamma. The Gormans,
who are our nearest neighbours (to call society--and we hardly
ever see them), have been in trade just as much as these
Milton-Northern people.'
'Yes,' said Mrs. Hale, almost indignantly, 'but, at any rate, the
Gormans made carriages for half the gentry of the county, and
were brought into some kind of intercourse with them; but these
factory people, who on earth wears cotton that can afford linen?'
'Well, mamma, I give up the cotton-spinners; I am not standing up
for them, any more than for any other trades-people. Only we
shall have little enough to do with them.'
'Why on earth has your father fixed on Milton-Northern to live
in?'
'Partly,' said Margaret, sighing, 'because it is so very
different from Helstone--partly because Mr. Bell says there is an
opening there for a private tutor.'
'Private tutor in Milton! Why can't he go to Oxford, and be a
tutor to gentlemen?'
'You forget, mamma! He is leaving the Church on account of his
opinions--his doubts would do him no good at Oxford.'
Mrs. Hale was silent for some time, quietly crying. At last she
said:--
'And the furniture--How in the world are we to manage the
removal? I never removed in my life, and only a fortnight to
think about it!'
Margaret was inexpressibly relieved to find that her mother's
anxiety and distress was lowered to this point, so insignificant
to herself, and on which she could do so much to help. She
planned and promised, and led her mother on to arrange fully as
much as could be fixed before they knew somewhat more
definitively what Mr. Hale intended to do. Throughout the day
Margaret never left her mother; bending her whole soul to
sympathise in all the various turns her feelings took; towards
evening especially, as she became more and more anxious that her
father should find a soothing welcome home awaiting him, after
his return from his day of fatigue and distress. She dwelt upon
what he must have borne in secret for long; her mother only
replied coldly that he ought to have told her, and that then at
any rate he would have had an adviser to give him counsel; and
Margaret turned faint at heart when she heard her father's step
in the hall. She dared not go to meet him, and tell him what she
had done all day, for fear of her mother's jealous annoyance. She
heard him linger, as if awaiting her, or some sign of her; and
she dared not stir; she saw by her mother's twitching lips, and
changing colour, that she too was aware that her husband had
returned. Presently he opened the room-door, and stood there
uncertain whether to come in. His face was gray and pale; he had
a timid, fearful look in his eyes; something almost pitiful to
see in a man's face; but that look of despondent uncertainty, of
mental and bodily languor, touched his wife's heart. She went to
him, and threw herself on his breast, crying out--
'Oh! Richard, Richard, you should have told me sooner!'
And then, in tears, Margaret left her, as she rushed up-stairs to
throw herself on her bed, and hide her face in the pillows to
stifle the hysteric sobs that would force their way at last,
after the rigid self-control of the whole day. How long she lay
thus she could not tell. She heard no noise, though the housemaid
came in to arrange the room. The affrighted girl stole out again
on tip-toe, and went and told Mrs. Dixon that Miss Hale was
crying as if her heart would break: she was sure she would make
herself deadly ill if she went on at that rate. In consequence of
this, Margaret felt herself touched, and started up into a
sitting posture; she saw the accustomed room, the figure of Dixon
in shadow, as the latter stood holding the candle a little behind
her, for fear of the effect on Miss Hale's startled eyes, swollen
and blinded as they were.
'Oh, Dixon! I did not hear you come into the room!' said
Margaret, resuming her trembling self-restraint. 'Is it very
late?' continued she, lifting herself languidly off the bed, yet
letting her feet touch the ground without fairly standing down,
as she shaded her wet ruffled hair off her face, and tried to
look as though nothing were the matter; as if she had only been
asleep.
'I hardly can tell what time it is,' replied Dixon, in an
aggrieved tone of voice. 'Since your mamma told me this terrible
news, when I dressed her for tea, I've lost all count of time.
I'm sure I don't know what is to become of us all. When Charlotte
told me just now you were sobbing, Miss Hale, I thought, no
wonder, poor thing! And master thinking of turning Dissenter at
his time of life, when, if it is not to be said he's done well in
the Church, he's not done badly after all. I had a cousin, miss,
who turned Methodist preacher after he was fifty years of age,
and a tailor all his life; but then he had never been able to
make a pair of trousers to fit, for as long as he had been in the
trade, so it was no wonder; but for master! as I said to missus,
"What would poor Sir John have said? he never liked your marrying
Mr. Hale, but if he could have known it would have come to this,
he would have sworn worse oaths than ever, if that was
possible!"'
Dixon had been so much accustomed to comment upon Mr. Hale's
proceedings to her mistress (who listened to her, or not, as she
was in the humour), that she never noticed Margaret's flashing
eye and dilating nostril. To hear her father talked of in this
way by a servant to her face!
'Dixon,' she said, in the low tone she always used when much
excited, which had a sound in it as of some distant turmoil, or
threatening storm breaking far away. 'Dixon! you forget to whom
you are speaking.' She stood upright and firm on her feet now,
confronting the waiting-maid, and fixing her with her steady
discerning eye. 'I am Mr. Hale's daughter. Go! You have made a
strange mistake, and one that I am sure your own good feeling
will make you sorry for when you think about it.'
Dixon hung irresolutely about the room for a minute or two.
Margaret repeated, 'You may leave me, Dixon. I wish you to go.'
Dixon did not know whether to resent these decided words or to
cry; either course would have done with her mistress: but, as she
said to herself, 'Miss Margaret has a touch of the old gentleman
about her, as well as poor Master Frederick; I wonder where they
get it from?' and she, who would have resented such words from
any one less haughty and determined in manner, was subdued enough
to say, in a half humble, half injured tone:
'Mayn't I unfasten your gown, miss, and do your hair?'
'No! not to-night, thank you.' And Margaret gravely lighted her
out of the room, and bolted the door. From henceforth Dixon
obeyed and admired Margaret. She said it was because she was so
like poor Master Frederick; but the truth was, that Dixon, as do
many others, liked to feel herself ruled by a powerful and
decided nature.
Margaret needed all Dixon's help in action, and silence in words;
for, for some time, the latter thought it her duty to show her
sense of affront by saying as little as possible to her young
lady; so the energy came out in doing rather than in speaking A
fortnight was a very short time to make arrangements for so
serious a removal; as Dixon said, 'Any one but a
gentleman--indeed almost any other gentleman--' but catching a
look at Margaret's straight, stern brow just here, she coughed
the remainder of the sentence away, and meekly took the horehound
drop that Margaret offered her, to stop the 'little tickling at
my chest, miss.' But almost any one but Mr. Hale would have had
practical knowledge enough to see, that in so short a time it
would be difficult to fix on any house in Milton-Northern, or
indeed elsewhere, to which they could remove the furniture that
had of necessity to be taken out of Helstone vicarage. Mrs. Hale,
overpowered by all the troubles and necessities for immediate
household decisions that seemed to come upon her at once, became
really ill, and Margaret almost felt it as a relief when her
mother fairly took to her bed, and left the management of affairs
to her. Dixon, true to her post of body-guard, attended most
faithfully to her mistress, and only emerged from Mrs. Hale's
bed-room to shake her head, and murmur to herself in a manner
which Margaret did not choose to hear. For, the one thing clear
and straight before her, was the necessity for leaving Helstone.
Mr. Hale's successor in the living was appointed; and, at any
rate, after her father's decision; there must be no lingering
now, for his sake, as well as from every other consideration. For
he came home every evening more and more depressed, after the
necessary leave-taking which he had resolved to have with every
individual parishioner. Margaret, inexperienced as she was in all
the necessary matter-of-fact business to be got through, did not
know to whom to apply for advice. The cook and Charlotte worked
away with willing arms and stout hearts at all the moving and
packing; and as far as that went, Margaret's admirable sense
enabled her to see what was best, and to direct how it should be
done. But where were they to go to? In a week they must be gone.
Straight to Milton, or where? So many arrangements depended on
this decision that Margaret resolved to ask her father one
evening, in spite of his evident fatigue and low spirits. He
answered:
'My dear! I have really had too much to think about to settle
this. What does your mother say? What does she wish? Poor Maria!'
He met with an echo even louder than his sigh. Dixon had just
come into the room for another cup of tea for Mrs. Hale, and
catching Mr. Hale's last words, and protected by his presence
from Margaret's upbraiding eyes, made bold to say, 'My poor
mistress!'
'You don't think her worse to-day,' said Mr. Hale, turning
hastily.
'I'm sure I can't say, sir. It's not for me to judge. The illness
seems so much more on the mind than on the body.'
Mr. Hale looked infinitely distressed.
'You had better take mamma her tea while it is hot, Dixon,' said
Margaret, in a tone of quiet authority.
'Oh! I beg your pardon, miss! My thoughts was otherwise occupied
in thinking of my poor----of Mrs. Hale.'
'Papa!' said Margaret, 'it is this suspense that is bad for you
both. Of course, mamma must feel your change of opinions: we
can't help that,' she continued, softly; 'but now the course is
clear, at least to a certain point. And I think, papa, that I
could get mamma to help me in planning, if you could tell me what
to plan for. She has never expressed any wish in any way, and
only thinks of what can't be helped. Are we to go straight to
Milton? Have you taken a house there?'
'No,' he replied. 'I suppose we must go into lodgings, and look
about for a house.
'And pack up the furniture so that it can be left at the railway
station, till we have met with one?'
'I suppose so. Do what you think best. Only remember, we shall
have much less money to spend.'
They had never had much superfluity, as Margaret knew. She felt
that it was a great weight suddenly thrown upon her shoulders.
Four months ago, all the decisions she needed to make were what
dress she would wear for dinner, and to help Edith to draw out
the lists of who should take down whom in the dinner parties at
home. Nor was the household in which she lived one that called
for much decision. Except in the one grand case of Captain
Lennox's offer, everything went on with the regularity of
clockwork. Once a year, there was a long discussion between her
aunt and Edith as to whether they should go to the Isle of Wight,
abroad, or to Scotland; but at such times Margaret herself was
secure of drifting, without any exertion of her own, into the
quiet harbour of home. Now, since that day when Mr. Lennox came,
and startled her into a decision, every day brought some
question, momentous to her, and to those whom she loved, to be
settled.
Her father went up after tea to sit with his wife. Margaret
remained alone in the drawing-room. Suddenly she took a candle
and went into her father's study for a great atlas, and lugging
it back into the drawing-room, she began to pore over the map of
England. She was ready to look up brightly when her father came
down stairs.
'I have hit upon such a beautiful plan. Look here--in Darkshire,
hardly the breadth of my finger from Milton, is Heston, which I
have often heard of from people living in the north as such a
pleasant little bathing-place. Now, don't you think we could get
mamma there with Dixon, while you and I go and look at houses,
and get one all ready for her in Milton? She would get a breath
of sea air to set her up for the winter, and be spared all the
fatigue, and Dixon would enjoy taking care of her.'
'Is Dixon to go with us?' asked Mr. Hale, in a kind of helpless
dismay.
'Oh, yes!' said Margaret. 'Dixon quite intends it, and I don't
know what mamma would do without her.'
'But we shall have to put up with a very different way of living,
I am afraid. Everything is so much dearer in a town. I doubt if
Dixon can make herself comfortable. To tell you the truth
Margaret, I sometimes feel as if that woman gave herself airs.'
'To be sure she does, papa,' replied Margaret; 'and if she has to
put up with a different style of living, we shall have to put up
with her airs, which will be worse. But she really loves us all,
and would be miserable to leave us, I am sure--especially in this
change; so, for mamma's sake, and for the sake of her
faithfulness, I do think she must go.'
'Very well, my dear. Go on. I am resigned. How far is Heston from
Milton? The breadth of one of your fingers does not give me a
very clear idea of distance.'
'Well, then, I suppose it is thirty miles; that is not much!'
'Not in distance, but in--. Never mind! If you really think it
will do your mother good, let it be fixed so.'
This was a great step. Now Margaret could work, and act, and plan
in good earnest. And now Mrs. Hale could rouse herself from her
languor, and forget her real suffering in thinking of the
pleasure and the delight of going to the sea-side. Her only
regret was that Mr. Hale could not be with her all the fortnight
she was to be there, as he had been for a whole fortnight once,
when they were engaged, and she was staying with Sir John and
Lady Beresford at Torquay. _