CHAPTER XLVIII.

“NE’ER TO BE FOUND AGAIN.”

“My own, my father’s friend!

I cannot part with thee!

I ne’er have shown, thou ne’er hast known,

How dear thou art to me.”

ANON.

The elements of the dinner-parties which Mrs. Lennox gave, were these;

her friends contributed the beauty, Captain Lennox the easy knowledge of

the subjects of the day; and Mr. Henry Lennox, and the sprinkling of

rising men who were received as his friends, brought the wit, the

cleverness, the keen and extensive knowledge of which they knew well

enough how to avail themselves without seeming pedantic, or burdening

the rapid flow of conversation.

These dinners were delightful; but even here Margaret’s dissatisfaction

found her out. Every talent, every feeling, every acquirement; nay, even

every tendency towards virtue, was used up as materials for fireworks;

the hidden, sacred fire, exhausted itself in sparkle and crackle. They

talked about art in a merely sensuous way, dwelling on outside effects,

instead of allowing themselves to learn what it has to teach. They

lashed themselves up into an enthusiasm about high subjects in company,

and never thought about them when they were alone; they squandered their

capabilities of appreciation into a mere flow of appropriate words. One

day, after the gentlemen had come up into the drawing-room, Mr. Lennox

drew near to Margaret, and addressed her in almost the first voluntary

words he had spoken to her since she had returned to live in Harley

Street.

“You did not look pleased at what Shirley was saying at dinner.”

“Didn’t I? My face must be very expressive,” replied Margaret.

“It always was. It has not lost the trick of being eloquent.”

“I did not like,” said Margaret, hastily, “his way of advocating what he

knew to be wrong—so glaringly wrong—even in jest.”

“But it was very clever. How every word told! Did you remember the happy

epithets?”

“Yes.”

“And despise them, you would like to add. Pray don’t scruple, though he

is my friend.”

“There! that is the exact tone in you, that”—she stopped short.

He listened for a moment to see if she would finish her sentence; but

she only reddened, and turned away; before she did so, however, she

heard him say, in a very low, clear voice,—

“If my tones, or modes of thought, are what you dislike, will you do me

the justice to tell me so, and so give me the chance of learning to

please you.”

All these weeks there was no intelligence of Mr. Bell’s going to Milton.

He had spoken of it at Helstone as of a journey which he might have to

take in a very short time from then; but he must have transacted his

business by writing. Margaret thought, ere now, and she knew that if he

could, he would avoid going to a place which he disliked, and moreover

would little understand the secret importance which she affixed to the

explanation that could only be given by word of mouth. She knew that he

would feel that it was necessary that it should be done; but whether in

summer, autumn, or winter, it would signify very little. It was now

August, and there had been no mention of the Spanish journey to which he

had alluded to Edith, and Margaret tried to reconcile herself to the

fading away of this illusion.

But one morning she received a letter, saying that next week he meant to

come up to town; he wanted to see her about a plan which he had in his

head; and, moreover, he intended to treat himself to a little doctoring,

as he had begun to come round to her opinion, that it would be

pleasanter to think that his health was more in fault than he, when he

found himself irritable and cross. There was altogether a tone of forced

cheerfulness in the letter, as Margaret noticed afterwards; but at the

time her attention was taken up by Edith’s exclamations.

“Coming up to town! Oh dear! and I am so worn out by the heat that I

don’t believe I have strength enough in me for another dinner. Besides,

everybody has left but our dear stupid selves, who can’t settle where to

go to. There would be nobody to meet him.”

“I’m sure he would much rather come and dine with us quite alone than

with the most agreeable strangers you could pick up. Besides, if he is

not well he won’t wish for invitations. I am glad he has owned it at

last. I was sure he was ill from the whole tone of his letters, and yet

he would not answer me when I asked him, and I had no third person to

whom I could apply for news.”

“Oh! he is not very ill, or he would not think of Spain.”

“He never mentions Spain.”

“No! but his plan that is to be proposed evidently relates to that. But

would you really go in such weather as this?”

“Oh, it will get cooler every day. Yes! Think of it. I am only afraid I

have thought and wished too much—in that absorbing wilful way which is

sure to be disappointed—or else gratified, to the letter, while in the

spirit it gives no pleasure.”

“But that’s superstitious, I’m sure, Margaret.”

“No, I don’t think it is. Only it ought to warn me, and check me from

giving way to such passionate wishes. It is a sort of ‘Give me children,

or else I die.’ I’m afraid my cry is, ‘Let me go to Cadiz, or else I

die.’”

“My dear Margaret! You’ll be persuaded to stay there; and then what

shall I do? Oh! I wish I could find somebody for you to marry here, that

I could be sure of you!”

“I shall never marry.”

“Nonsense, and double nonsense! Why, as Sholto says, you’re such an

attraction to the house, that he knows ever so many men who will be glad

to visit here next year for your sake.”

Margaret drew herself up haughtily. “Do you know, Edith, I sometimes

think your Corfu life has taught you——”

“Well!”

“Just a shade or two of coarseness.”

Edith began to sob so bitterly, and to declare so vehemently that

Margaret had lost all love for her, and no longer looked upon her as a

friend, that Margaret came to think that she had expressed too harsh an

opinion for the relief of her own wounded pride, and ended by being

Edith’s slave for the rest of the day; while that little lady, overcome

by wounded feeling, lay like a victim on the sofa, heaving occasionally

a profound sigh, till at last she fell asleep.

Mr. Bell did not make his appearance even on the day to which he had for

a second time deferred his visit. The next morning there came a letter

from Wallis, his servant, stating that his master had not been feeling

well for some time, which had been the true reason of his putting off

his journey; and that at the very time when he should have set out for

London, he had been seized with an apoplectic fit; it was, indeed,

Wallis added, the opinion of the medical men—that he could not survive

the night; and more than probable, that by the time Miss Hale received

this letter his poor master would be no more.

Margaret received this letter at breakfast-time, and turned very pale as

she read it; then, silently putting into Edith’s hands, she left the

room.

Edith was terribly shocked as she read it, and cried in a sobbing,

frightened, childish way, much to her husband’s distress. Mrs. Shaw was

breakfasting in her own room, and upon him devolved the task of

reconciling his wife to the near contact into which she seemed to be

brought with death, for the first time that she could remember in her

life. Here was a man who was to have dined with them to-day lying dead

or dying instead! It was some time before she could think of Margaret.

Then she started up, and followed her upstairs into her room. Dixon was

packing up a few toilette articles, and Margaret was hastily putting on

her bonnet, shedding tears all the time, and her hands trembling so that

she could hardly tie the strings.

“Oh, dear Margaret! how shocking! What are you doing? Are you going

out? Sholto would telegraph or do anything you like.”

“I am going to Oxford. There is a train in half-an-hour. Dixon has

offered to go with me, but I could have gone by myself. I must see him

again. Besides, he may be better, and want some care. He has been like a

father to me. Don’t stop me, Edith.”

“But I must. Mamma won’t like it at all. Come and ask her about it,

Margaret. You don’t know where you’re going. I should not mind if he had

a house of his own; but in his Fellow’s rooms! Come to mamma, and do ask

her before you go. It will not take a minute.”

Margaret yielded, and lost her train. In the suddenness of the event,

Mrs. Shaw became bewildered and hysterical, and so the precious time

slipped by. But there was another train in a couple of hours; and after

various discussions on propriety and impropriety, it was decided that

Captain Lennox should accompany Margaret, as the one thing to which she

was constant was her resolution to go, alone or otherwise, by the next

train, whatever might be said of the propriety or impropriety of the

step. Her father’s friend, her own friend, was lying at the point of

death; and the thought of this came upon her with such vividness, that

she was surprised herself at the firmness with which she asserted

something of her right to independence of action; and five minutes

before the time of starting, she found herself sitting in a railway

carriage opposite to Captain Lennox. It 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. But at the sound of the tender

voices of her aunt and Edith, of 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.