North and South
Page 313It was always a comfort to her to think that she had gone, though
it was only to hear that he had died in the night. She saw the
rooms that he had occupied, and associated them ever after most
fondly in her memory with the idea of her father, and his one
cherished and faithful friend.
They had promised Edith before starting, that if all had ended as
they feared, they would return to dinner; so that long, lingering
look around the room in which her father had died, had to be
interrupted, and a quiet farewell taken of the kind old face that
had so often come out with pleasant words, and merry quips and
cranks.
Captain Lennox fell asleep on their journey home; and Margaret
could cry at leisure, and bethink her of this fatal year, and all
the woes it had brought to her. No sooner was she fully aware of
one loss than another came--not to supersede her grief for the
one before, but to re-open wounds and feelings scarcely healed.
merry little Sholto's glee at her arrival, and at the sight of
the well-lighted rooms, with their mistress pretty in her
paleness and her eager sorrowful interest, Margaret roused
herself from her heavy trance of almost superstitious
hopelessness, and began to feel that even around her joy and
gladness might gather. She had Edith's place on the sofa; Sholto
was taught to carry aunt Margaret's cup of tea very carefully to
her; and by the time she went up to dress, she could thank God
for having spared her dear old friend a long or a painful
illness.
But when night came--solemn night, and all the house was quiet,
Margaret still sate watching the beauty of a London sky at such
an hour, on such a summer evening; the faint pink reflection of
earthly lights on the soft clouds that float tranquilly into the
white moonlight, out of the warm gloom which lies motionless
her childhood, just when it merged into girlhood, and when the
feelings and conscience had been first awakened into full
activity. On some such night as this she remembered promising to
herself to live as brave and noble a life as any heroine she ever
read or heard of in romance, a life sans peur et sans reproche;
it had seemed to her then that she had only to will, and such a
life would be accomplished. And now she had learnt that not only
to will, but also to pray, was a necessary condition in the truly
heroic. Trusting to herself, she had fallen. It was a just
consequence of her sin, that all excuses for it, all temptation
to it, should remain for ever unknown to the person in whose
opinion it had sunk her lowest. She stood face to face at last
with her sin. She knew it for what it was; Mr. Bell's kindly
sophistry that nearly all men were guilty of equivocal actions,
and that the motive ennobled the evil, had never had much real
all, she might have fearlessly told the truth, seemed low and
poor. Nay, even now, her anxiety to have her character for truth
partially excused in Mr. Thornton's eyes, as Mr. Bell had
promised to do, was a very small and petty consideration, now
that she was afresh taught by death what life should be. If all
the world spoke, acted, or kept silence with intent to
deceive,--if dearest interests were at stake, and dearest lives
in peril,--if no one should ever know of her truth or her
falsehood to measure out their honour or contempt for her by,
straight alone where she stood, in the presence of God, she
prayed that she might have strength to speak and act the truth
for evermore.