_ CHAPTER VI - FAREWELL
'Unwatch'd the garden bough shall sway,
The tender blossom flutter down,
Unloved that beech will gather brown,
The maple burn itself away;
Unloved, the sun-flower, shining fair,
Ray round with flames her disk of seed,
And many a rose-carnation feed
With summer spice the humming air;
* * * * * *
Till from the garden and the wild
A fresh association blow,
And year by year the landscape grow
Familiar to the stranger's child;
As year by year the labourer tills
His wonted glebe, or lops the glades;
And year by year our memory fades
From all the circle of the hills.'
TENNYSON.
The last day came; the house was full of packing-cases, which
were being carted off at the front door, to the nearest railway
station. Even the pretty lawn at the side of the house was made
unsightly and untidy by the straw that had been wafted upon it
through the open door and windows. The rooms had a strange
echoing sound in them,--and the light came harshly and strongly
in through the uncurtained windows,--seeming already unfamiliar
and strange. Mrs. Hale's dressing-room was left untouched to the
last; and there she and Dixon were packing up clothes, and
interrupting each other every now and then to exclaim at, and
turn over with fond regard, some forgotten treasure, in the shape
of some relic of the children while they were yet little. They
did not make much progress with their work. Down-stairs, Margaret
stood calm and collected, ready to counsel or advise the men who
had been called in to help the cook and Charlotte. These two
last, crying between whiles, wondered how the young lady could
keep up so this last day, and settled it between them that she
was not likely to care much for Helstone, having been so long in
London. There she stood, very pale and quiet, with her large
grave eyes observing everything,--up to every present
circumstance, however small. They could not understand how her
heart was aching all the time, with a heavy pressure that no
sighs could lift off or relieve, and how constant exertion for
her perceptive faculties was the only way to keep herself from
crying out with pain. Moreover, if she gave way, who was to act?
Her father was examining papers, books, registers, what not, in
the vestry with the clerk; and when he came in, there were his
own books to pack up, which no one but himself could do to his
satisfaction. Besides, was Margaret one to give way before
strange men, or even household friends like the cook and
Charlotte! Not she. But at last the four packers went into the
kitchen to their tea; and Margaret moved stiffly and slowly away
from the place in the hall where she had been standing so long,
out through the bare echoing drawing-room, into the twilight of
an early November evening. There was a filmy veil of soft dull
mist obscuring, but not hiding, all objects, giving them a lilac
hue, for the sun had not yet fully set; a robin was
singing,--perhaps, Margaret thought, the very robin that her
father had so often talked of as his winter pet, and for which he
had made, with his own hands, a kind of robin-house by his
study-window. The leaves were more gorgeous than ever; the first
touch of frost would lay them all low on the ground. Already one
or two kept constantly floating down, amber and golden in the low
slanting sun-rays.
Margaret went along the walk under the pear-tree wall. She had
never been along it since she paced it at Henry Lennox's side.
Here, at this bed of thyme, he began to speak of what she must
not think of now. Her eyes were on that late-blowing rose as she
was trying to answer; and she had caught the idea of the vivid
beauty of the feathery leaves of the carrots in the very middle
of his last sentence. Only a fortnight ago And all so changed!
Where was he now? In London,--going through the old round; dining
with the old Harley Street set, or with gayer young friends of
his own. Even now, while she walked sadly through that damp and
drear garden in the dusk, with everything falling and fading, and
turning to decay around her, he might be gladly putting away his
law-books after a day of satisfactory toil, and freshening
himself up, as he had told her he often did, by a run in the
Temple Gardens, taking in the while the grand inarticulate mighty
roar of tens of thousands of busy men, nigh at hand, but not
seen, and catching ever, at his quick turns, glimpses of the
lights of the city coming up out of the depths of the river. He
had often spoken to Margaret of these hasty walks, snatched in
the intervals between study and dinner. At his best times and in
his best moods had he spoken of them; and the thought of them had
struck upon her fancy. Here there was no sound. The robin had
gone away into the vast stillness of night. Now and then, a
cottage door in the distance was opened and shut, as if to admit
the tired labourer to his home; but that sounded very far away. A
stealthy, creeping, cranching sound among the crisp fallen leaves
of the forest, beyond the garden, seemed almost close at hand.
Margaret knew it was some poacher. Sitting up in her bed-room
this past autumn, with the light of her candle extinguished, and
purely revelling in the solemn beauty of the heavens and the
earth, she had many a time seen the light noiseless leap of the
poachers over the garden-fence, their quick tramp across the dewy
moonlit lawn, their disappearance in the black still shadow
beyond. The wild adventurous freedom of their life had taken her
fancy; she felt inclined to wish them success; she had no fear of
them. But to-night she was afraid, she knew not why. She heard
Charlotte shutting the windows, and fastening up for the night,
unconscious that any one had gone out into the garden. A small
branch--it might be of rotten wood, or it might be broken by
force--came heavily down in the nearest part of the forest,
Margaret ran, swift as Camilla, down to the window, and rapped at
it with a hurried tremulousness which startled Charlotte within.
'Let me in! Let me in! It is only me, Charlotte!' Her heart did
not still its fluttering till she was safe in the drawing-room,
with the windows fastened and bolted, and the familiar walls
hemming her round, and shutting her in. She had sate down upon a
packing case; cheerless, Chill was the dreary and dismantled
room--no fire nor other light, but Charlotte's long unsnuffed
candle. Charlotte looked at Margaret with surprise; and Margaret,
feeling it rather than seeing it, rose up.
'I was afraid you were shutting me out altogether, Charlotte,'
said she, half-smiling. 'And then you would never have heard me
in the kitchen, and the doors into the lane and churchyard are
locked long ago.'
'Oh, miss, I should have been sure to have missed you soon. The
men would have wanted you to tell them how to go on. And I have
put tea in master's study, as being the most comfortable room, so
to speak.'
'Thank you, Charlotte. You are a kind girl. I shall be sorry to
leave you. You must try and write to me, if I can ever give you
any little help or good advice. I shall always be glad to get a
letter from Helstone, you know. I shall be sure and send you my
address when. I know it.'
The study was all ready for tea. There was a good blazing fire,
and unlighted candles on the table. Margaret sat down on the rug,
partly to warm herself, for the dampness of the evening hung
about her dress, and overfatigue had made her chilly. She kept
herself balanced by clasping her hands together round her knees;
her head dropped a little towards her chest; the attitude was one
of despondency, whatever her frame of mind might be. But when she
heard her father's step on the gravel outside, she started up,
and hastily shaking her heavy black hair back, and wiping a few
tears away that had come on her cheeks she knew not how, she went
out to open the door for him. He showed far more depression than
she did. She could hardly get him to talk, although she tried to
speak on subjects that would interest him, at the cost of an
effort every time which she thought would be her last.
'Have you been a very long walk to-day?' asked she, on seeing his
refusal to touch food of any kind.
'As far as Fordham Beeches. I went to see Widow Maltby; she is
sadly grieved at not having wished you good-bye. She says little
Susan has kept watch down the lane for days past.--Nay, Margaret,
what is the matter, dear?' The thought of the little child
watching for her, and continually disappointed--from no
forgetfulness on her part, but from sheer inability to leave
home--was the last drop in poor Margaret's cup, and she was
sobbing away as if her heart would break. Mr. Hale was
distressingly perplexed. He rose, and walked nervously up and
down the room. Margaret tried to check herself, but would not
speak until she could do so with firmness. She heard him talking,
as if to himself.
'I cannot bear it. I cannot bear to see the sufferings of others.
I think I could go through my own with patience. Oh, is there no
going back?'
'No, father,' said Margaret, looking straight at him, and
speaking low and steadily. 'It is bad to believe you in error. It
would he infinitely worse to have known you a hypocrite.' She
dropped her voice at the last few words, as if entertaining the
idea of hypocrisy for a moment in connection with her father
savoured of irreverence.
'Besides,' she went on, 'it is only that I am tired to-night;
don't think that I am suffering from what you have done, dear
papa. We can't either of us talk about it to-night, I believe,'
said she, finding that tears and sobs would come in spite of
herself. 'I had better go and take mamma up this cup of tea. She
had hers very early, when I was too busy to go to her, and I am
sure she will be glad of another now.'
Railroad time inexorably wrenched them away from lovely, beloved
Helstone, the next morning. They were gone; they had seen the
last of the long low parsonage home, half-covered with
China-roses and pyracanthus--more homelike than ever in the
morning sun that glittered on its windows, each belonging to some
well-loved room. Almost before they had settled themselves into
the car, sent from Southampton to fetch them to the station, they
were gone away to return no more. A sting at Margaret's heart
made her strive to look out to catch the last glimpse of the old
church tower at the turn where she knew it might be seen above a
wave of the forest trees; but her father remembered this too, and
she silently acknowledged his greater right to the one window
from which it could be seen. She leant back and shut her eyes,
and the tears welled forth, and hung glittering for an instant on
the shadowing eye-lashes before rolling slowly down her cheeks,
and dropping, unheeded, on her dress.
They were to stop in London all night at some quiet hotel. Poor
Mrs. Hale had cried in her way nearly all day long; and Dixon
showed her sorrow by extreme crossness, and a continual irritable
attempt to keep her petticoats from even touching the unconscious
Mr. Hale, whom she regarded as the origin of all this suffering.
They went through the well-known streets, past houses which they
had often visited, past shops in which she had lounged,
impatient, by her aunt's side, while that lady was making some
important and interminable decision-nay, absolutely past
acquaintances in the streets; for though the morning had been of
an incalculable length to them, and they felt as if it ought long
ago to have closed in for the repose of darkness, it was the very
busiest time of a London afternoon in November when they arrived
there. It was long since Mrs. Hale had been in London; and she
roused up, almost like a child, to look about her at the
different streets, and to gaze after and exclaim at the shops and
carriages.
'Oh, there's Harrison's, where I bought so many of my wedding-things.
Dear! how altered! They've got immense plate-glass windows, larger
than Crawford's in Southampton. Oh, and there, I declare--no, it
is not--yes, it is--Margaret, we have just passed Mr. Henry Lennox.
Where can he be going, among all these shops?'
Margaret started forwards, and as quickly fell back, half-smiling
at herself for the sudden motion. They were a hundred yards away
by this time; but he seemed like a relic of Helstone--he was
associated with a bright morning, an eventful day, and she should
have liked to have seen him, without his seeing her,--without the
chance of their speaking.
The evening, without employment, passed in a room high up in an
hotel, was long and heavy. Mr. Hale went out to his bookseller's,
and to call on a friend or two. Every one they saw, either in the
house or out in the streets, appeared hurrying to some
appointment, expected by, or expecting somebody. They alone
seemed strange and friendless, and desolate. Yet within a mile,
Margaret knew of house after house, where she for her own sake,
and her mother for her aunt Shaw's, would be welcomed, if they
came in gladness, or even in peace of mind. If they came
sorrowing, and wanting sympathy in a complicated trouble like the
present, then they would be felt as a shadow in all these houses
of intimate acquaintances, not friends. London life is too
whirling and full to admit of even an hour of that deep silence
of feeling which the friends of Job showed, when 'they sat with
him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spake a
word unto him; for they saw that his grief was very great.' _