Margaret had remained in the same state; white, motionless, speechless,tearless. They had told her that her aunt Shaw was coming; but she hadnot expressed either surprise or pleasure, or dislike to the idea. Mr. Bell,whose appetite had returned, and who appreciated Dixon"s endeavoursto gratify it, in vain urged upon her to taste some sweetbreads stewedwith oysters; she shook her head with the same quiet obstinacy as onthe previous day; and he was obliged to console himself for herrejection, by eating them all himself But Margaret was the first to hearthe stopping of the cab that brought her aunt from the railway station.
Her eyelids quivered, her lips coloured and trembled. Mr. Bell wentdown to meet Mrs. Shaw; and when they came up, Margaret wasstanding, trying to steady her dizzy self; and when she saw her aunt, shewent forward to the arms open to receive her, and first found thepassionate relief of tears on her aunt"s shoulder. All thoughts of quiethabitual love, of tenderness for years, of relationship to the dead,--allthat inexplicable likeness in look, tone, and gesture, that seem to belongto one family, and which reminded Margaret so forcibly at this momentof her mother,--came in to melt and soften her numbed heart into theoverflow of warm tears.
Mr. Bell stole out of the room, and went down into the study, where heordered a fire, and tried to divert his thoughts by taking down andexamining the different books. Each volume brought a remembrance ora suggestion of his dead friend. It might be a change of employmentfrom his two days" work of watching Margaret, but it was no change ofthought. He was glad to catch the sound of Mr. Thornton"s voice,making enquiry at the door. Dixon was rather cavalierly dismissinghim; for with the appearance of Mrs. Shaw"s maid, came visions offormer grandeur, of the Beresford blood, of the "station" (so she waspleased to term it) from which her young lady had been ousted, and towhich she was now, please God, to be restored. These visions, whichshe had been dwelling on with complacency in her conversation withMrs. Shaw"s maid (skilfully eliciting meanwhile all the circumstances ofstate and consequence connected with the Harley Street establishment,for the edification of the listening Martha), made Dixon rather inclinedto be supercilious in her treatment of any inhabitant of Milton; so,though she always stood rather in awe of Mr. Thornton, she was as curtas she durst be in telling him that he could see none of the inmates ofthe house that night. It was rather uncomfortable to he contradicted inher statement by Mr. Bell"s opening the study-door, and calling out:
"Thornton! is that you? Come in for a minute or two; I want to speak toyou." So Mr. Thornton went into the study, and Dixon had to retreat intothe kitchen, and reinstate herself in her own esteem by a prodigiousstory of Sir John Beresford"s coach and six, when he was high sheriff.
"I don"t know what I wanted to say to you after all. Only it"s dull enoughto sit in a room where everything speaks to you of a dead friend. YetMargaret and her aunt must have the drawing-room to themselves!"
"Is Mrs.--is her aunt come?" asked Mr. Thornton.
"Come? Yes! maid and all. One would have thought she might havecome by herself at such a time! And now I shall have to turn out andfind my way to the Clarendon."
"You must not go to the Clarendon. We have five or six empty bedroomsat home."
"Well aired?"
"I think you may trust my mother for that."
"Then I"ll only run up-stairs and wish that wan girl good-night, andmake my bow to her aunt, and go off with you straight."
Mr. Bell was some time up-stairs. Mr. Thornton began to think it long,for he was full of business, and had hardly been able to spare the timefor running up to Crampton, and enquiring how Miss Hale was.
When they had set out upon their walk, Mr. Bell said:
"I was kept by those women in the drawing-room. Mrs. Shaw is anxiousto get home--on account of her daughter, she says--and wants Margaretto go off with her at once. Now she is no more fit for travelling than Iam for flying. Besides, she says, and very justly, that she has friends shemust see--that she must wish good-bye to several people; and then heraunt worried her about old claims, and was she forgetful of old friends?
And she said, with a great burst of crying, she should be glad enough togo from a place where she had suffered so much. Now I must return toOxford to-morrow, and I don"t know on which side of the scale to throwin my voice."
He paused, as if asking a question; but he received no answer from hiscompanion, the echo of whose thoughts kept repeating-"
Where she had suffered so much." Alas! and that was the way in whichthis eighteen months in Milton--to him so unspeakably precious, downto its very bitterness, which was worth all the rest of life"s sweetness-wouldbe remembered. Neither loss of father, nor loss of mother, dearas she was to Mr. Thornton, could have poisoned the remembrance ofthe weeks, the days, the hours, when a walk of two miles, every step ofwhich was pleasant, as it brought him nearer and nearer to her, took himto her sweet presence--every step of which was rich, as each recurringmoment that bore him away from her made him recall some fresh gracein her demeanour, or pleasant pungency in her character. Yes! whateverhad happened to him, external to his relation to her, he could never havespoken of that time, when he could have seen her every day--when hehad her within his grasp, as it were--as a time of suffering. It had been aroyal time of luxury to him, with all its stings and contumelies,compared to the poverty that crept round and clipped the anticipation ofthe future down to sordid fact, and life without an atmosphere of eitherhope or fear.