North and South · Chapter 30 (2/2)

In the middle, they heard Dixon’s foot on the stairs. Mr. Hale started from his languid posture in his great armchair, from which he had been watching his children in a dreamy way, as if they were acting some drama of happiness, which it was pretty to look at, but which was distinct from reality, and in which he had no part. He stood up, and faced the door, showing such a strange, sudden anxiety to conceal Frederick from the sight of any person entering, even though it were the faithful Dixon, that a shiver came over Margaret’s heart: it reminded her of the new fear in their lives. She caught at Frederick’s arm, and clutched it tight, while a stern thought compressed her brow, and caused her to set her teeth. And yet they knew it was only Dixon’s measured tread. They heard her walk the length of the passage⁠—into the kitchen. Margaret rose up.

“I will go to her, and tell her. And I shall hear how mamma is.” Mrs. Hale was awake. She rambled at first; but after they had given her some tea she was refreshed, though not disposed to talk. It was better that the night should pass over before she was told of her son’s arrival. Dr. Donaldson’s appointed visit would bring nervous excitement enough for the evening; and he might tell them how to prepare her for seeing Frederick. He was there, in the house; could be summoned at any moment.

Margaret could not sit still. It was a relief to her to aid Dixon in all her preparations for “Master Frederick.” It seemed as though she never could be tired again. Each glimpse into the room where he sat by his father, conversing with him, about, she knew not what, nor cared to know⁠—was increase of strength to her. Her own time for talking and hearing would come at last, and she was too certain of this to feel in a hurry to grasp it now. She took in his appearance and liked it. He had delicate features, redeemed from effeminacy by the swarthiness of his complexion, and his quick intensity of expression. His eyes were generally merry-looking, but at times they and his mouth so suddenly changed, and gave her such an idea of latent passion, that it almost made her afraid. But this look was only for an instant; and had in it no doggedness, no vindictiveness; it was rather the instantaneous ferocity of expression that comes over the countenances of all natives of wild or southern countries⁠—a ferocity which enhances the charm of the childlike softness into which such a look may melt away. Margaret might fear the violence of the impulsive nature thus occasionally betrayed, but there was nothing in it to make her distrust, or recoil in the least, from the newfound brother. On the contrary, all their intercourse was peculiarly charming to her from the very first. She knew then how much responsibility she had had to bear, from the exquisite sensation of relief which she felt in Frederick’s presence. He understood his father and mother⁠—their characters and their weaknesses, and went along with a careless freedom, which was yet most delicately careful not to hurt or wound any of their feelings. He seemed to know instinctively when a little of the natural brilliancy of his manner and conversation would not jar on the deep depression of his father, or might relieve his mother’s pain. Whenever it would have been out of tune, and out of time, his patient devotion and watchfulness came into play, and made him an admirable nurse. Then Margaret was almost touched into tears by the allusions which he often made to their childish days in the New Forest; he had never forgotten her⁠—or Helstone either⁠—all the time he had been roaming among distant countries and foreign people. She might talk to him of the old spot, and never feared tiring him. She had been afraid of him before he came, even while she had longed for his coming; seven or eight years had, she felt, produced such great changes in herself that, forgetting how much of the original Margaret was left, she had reasoned that if her tastes and feelings had so materially altered, even in her stay-at-home life, his wild career, with which she was but imperfectly acquainted, must have almost substituted another Frederick for the tall stripling in his middy’s uniform, whom she remembered looking up to with such admiring awe. But in their absence they had grown nearer to each other in age, as well as in many other things. And so it was that the weight, this sorrowful time, was lightened to Margaret. Other light than that of Frederick’s presence she had none. For a few hours, the mother rallied on seeing her son. She sat with his hand in hers; she would not part with it even while she slept; and Margaret had to feed him like a baby, rather than he should disturb her mother by removing a finger. Mrs. Hale wakened while they were thus engaged; she slowly moved her head round on the pillow, and smiled at her children, as she understood what they were doing, and why it was done.

“I am very selfish,” said she; “but it will not be for long.” Frederick bent down and kissed the feeble hand that imprisoned his.

This state of tranquility could not endure for many days, nor perhaps for many hours; so Dr. Donaldson assured Margaret. After the kind doctor had gone away, she stole down to Frederick, who, during the visit, had been adjured to remain quietly concealed in the back parlour, usually Dixon’s bedroom, but now given up to him.

Margaret told him what Dr. Donaldson said.

“I don’t believe it,” he exclaimed. “She is very ill; she may be dangerously ill, and in immediate danger, too; but I can’t imagine that she could be as she is, if she were on the point of death. Margaret! she should have some other advice⁠—some London doctor. Have you never thought of that?”

“Yes,” said Margaret, “more than once. But I don’t believe it would do any good. And, you know, we have not the money to bring any great London surgeon down, and I am sure Dr. Donaldson is only second in skill to the very best⁠—if, indeed, he is to them.”

Frederick began to walk up and down the room impatiently.

“I have credit in Cadiz,” said he, “but none here, owing to this wretched change of name. Why did my father leave Helstone? That was the blunder.”

“It was no blunder,” said Margaret gloomily. “And above all possible chances, avoid letting papa hear anything like what you have just been saying. I can see that he is tormenting himself already with the idea that mamma would never have been ill if we had stayed at Helstone, and you don’t know papa’s agonising power of self-reproach!”

Frederick walked away as if he were on the quarterdeck. At last he stopped right opposite to Margaret, and looked at her drooping and desponding attitude for an instant.

“My little Margaret!” said he, caressing her. “Let us hope as long as we can. Poor little woman! what! is this face all wet with tears? I will hope. I will, in spite of a thousand doctors. Bear up, Margaret, and be brave enough to hope!”

Margaret choked in trying to speak, and when she did it was very low.

“I must try to be meek enough to trust. Oh, Frederick! mamma was getting to love me so! And I was getting to understand her. And now comes death to snap us asunder!”

“Come, come, come! Let us go upstairs, and do something, rather than waste time that may be so precious. Thinking has, many a time, made me sad, darling; but doing never did in all my life. My theory is a sort of parody on the maxim of ‘Get money, my son, honestly if you can; but get money.’ My precept is, ‘Do something my sister, do good if you can; but, at any rate, do something.’ ”

“Not excluding mischief,” said Margaret, smiling faintly through her tears.

“By no means. What I do exclude is the remorse afterwards. Blot your misdeeds out (if you are particularly conscientious), by a good deed, as soon as you can; just as we did a correct sum at school on the slate, where an incorrect one was only half rubbed out. It was better than wetting our sponge with our tears; both less loss of time where tears had to be waited for, and a better effect at last.”

If Margaret thought Frederick’s theory rather a rough one at first, she saw how he worked it out into continual production of kindness in fact. After a bad night with his mother (for he insisted on taking his turn as a sitter-up) he was busy next morning before breakfast, contriving a leg-rest for Dixon, who was beginning to feel the fatigues of watching. At breakfast-time, he interested Mr. Hale with vivid, graphic, rattling accounts of the wild life he had led in Mexico, South America, and elsewhere. Margaret would have given up the effort in despair to rouse Mr. Hale out of his dejection; it would even have affected herself and rendered her incapable of talking at all. But Fred, true to his theory, did something perpetually; and talking was the only thing to be done, besides eating, at breakfast.

Before the night of that day, Dr. Donaldson’s opinion was proved to be too well founded. Convulsions came on; and when they ceased, Mrs. Hale was unconscious. Her husband might lie by her shaking the bed with his sobs; her son’s strong arms might lift her tenderly up into a comfortable position; her daughter’s hands might bathe her face; but she knew them not. She would never recognise them again, till they met in Heaven.

Before the morning came all was over.

Then Margaret rose from her trembling and despondency, and became as a strong angel of comfort to her father and brother. For Frederick had broken down now, and all his theories were of no use to him. He cried so violently when shut up in his little room at night, that Margaret and Dixon came down in affright to warn him to be quiet: for the house partitions were but thin, and the next door neighbours might easily hear his youthful passionate sobs, so different from the slower trembling agony of afterlife, when we become inured to grief, and dare not be rebellious against the inexorable doom, knowing who it is that decrees.

Margaret sat with her father in the room of the dead. If he had cried, she would have been thankful. But he sat by the bed quite quietly; only, from time to time, he uncovered the face, and stroked it gently, making a kind of soft inarticulate noise, like that of some mother-animal caressing her young. He took no notice of Margaret’s presence. Once or twice she came up to kiss him; and he submitted to it, giving her a little push away when she had done, as if her affection disturbed him from his absorption in the dead. He started when he heard Frederick’s cries, and shook his head:⁠—“Poor boy! poor boy!” he said, and then took no more notice. Margaret’s heart ached within her. She could not think of her own loss in thinking of her father’s case. The night was wearing away, and the day was at hand, when, without a word of preparation, Margaret’s voice broke upon the stillness of the room, with a clearness of sound that startled even herself: “Let not your heart be troubled,” it said; and she went steadily on through all that chapter of unspeakable consolation.