'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 alone 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 after-life, when we become inured to grief, and dare not

be rebellious against the inexorable doom, knowing who it is that

decrees.

Margaret sate with her father in the room with the dead. If he

had cried, she would have been thankful. But he sate 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

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.




readonlinefreebook.com Copyright 2016 - 2024