Chapter Fourteen.

Chapter Fourteen.Preparing for Home.The affair proceeded rapidly, as such affairs should do where there is no reason for delay. There was no more talk of Birmingham. The journey which was to have been taken in a few days was not spoken of again. The external arrangements advanced well, so many as there were anxious about this part of the matter, and accomplished in habits of business. Mr Rowland was happy to let the corner-house to Mr Hope, not even taking advantage, as his lady advised, of its being peculiarly fit for a surgeon’s residence, from its having a door round the corner (made to be a surgery-door!), to raise the rent. Mr Rowland behaved handsomely about everything, rent, alterations, painting, and papering, and laying out the garden anew. Mr Grey bestirred himself to get the affairs at Birmingham settled; and he was soon enabled to inform Mr Hope that Hester’s fortune was ascertained, and that it was smaller than could have been wished. He believed his cousins would have seventy pounds a-year each, and no more. It was some compensation for the mortifying nature of this announcement, that Mr Hope evidently did not care at all about the matter. He was not an ambitious, nor yet a luxurious man: his practice supplied an income sufficient for the ease of young married people, and it was on the increase.No one seemed to doubt for a moment that Margaret would live with her sister. There was no other home for her; she and Hester had never been parted; there seemed no reason for their parting now, and every inducement for their remaining together. Margaret did not dream of objecting to this: she only made it a condition that fifty pounds of her yearly income should go into the family-stock, thus saving her from obligation to any one for her maintenance. Living was so cheap in Deerbrook, that Margaret was assured that she would render herself quite independent by paying fifty pounds a-year for her share of the household expenses, and reserving twenty for her personal wants.Both the sisters were surprised to find how much pleasure they took in the preparations for this marriage. They could not have believed it, and, but that they were too happy to feel any kind of contempt, they would have despised themselves for it. But such contempt would have been misplaced. All things are according to the ideas and feelings with which they are connected; and if, as old George Herbert says, dusting a room is an act of religious grace when it is done from a feeling of religious duty, furnishing a house is a process of high enjoyment when it is the preparation of a home for happy love. The dwelling is hung all round with bright anticipations, and crowded with blissful thoughts, spoken by none, perhaps, but present to all. On this table, and by this snug fireside, will the cheerful winter breakfast go forward, when each is about to enter on the gladsome business of the day; and that sofa will be drawn out, and those window-curtains will be closed, when the intellectual pleasures of the evening—the rewards of the laborious day—begin. Those ground-windows will stand open all the summer noon, and the flower stands will be gay and fragrant; and the shaded parlour will be the cool retreat of the wearied husband, when he comes in to rest from his professional toils. There will stand the books destined to refresh and refine his higher tastes; and there the music with which the wife will indulge him. Here will they first feel what it is to have a home of their own—where they will first enjoy the privacy of it, the security, the freedom, the consequence in the eyes of others, the sacredness in their own. Here they will first exercise the graces of hospitality, and the responsibility of control. Here will they feel that they have attained the great resting-place of their life—the resting-place of their individual lot, but only the starting-point of their activity. Such is the work of furnishing a house once in a lifetime. It may be a welcome task to the fine lady, decking her drawing-room anew, to gratify her ambition, or divert herennui—it may be a satisfactory labour to the elderly couple, settling themselves afresh when their children are dispersed abroad, and it becomes necessary to discard the furniture that the boys have battered and spoiled—it may be a refined amusement to the selfish man of taste, wishing to prolong or recall the pleasures of foreign travel; but to none is it the conscious delight that it is to young lovers and their sympathising friends, whether the scene be the two rooms of the hopeful young artisan, about to bring home his bride from service; or the palace of a nobleman, enriched with intellectual luxuries for the lady of his adoration; or the quiet abode of an unambitious professional man, whose aim is privacy and comfort.Margaret’s delight in the process of preparation was the most intense of all that was felt, except perhaps by one person. Mrs Grey and Sophia enjoyed the bustle, and the consequence, and the exercise of their feminine talents, and the gossip of the village, and the spitefulness of Mrs Rowland’s criticisms, when she had recovered from her delight at her brother’s escape from Hester, and had leisure to be offended at Mr Hope’s marrying into the Grey connexion so decidedly. The children relished the mystery of buying their presents secretly, and hiding them from their cousins, till the day before the wedding. Sydney was proud to help Margaret in training the chrysanthemums, putting the garden into winter trim, and in planting round the walls of the surgery with large evergreens. Mr Grey came down almost every evening to suggest and approve; and Morris left her needle (now busy from morning till night in Hester’s service) to admire, and to speak her wishes, when desired, about the preparations in her department. Morris, another maid, and a foot-boy, were the only servants; and Morris was to have everything as she liked best for her own region. But Margaret was as eager and interested as all the rest together. Her heart was light for her sister; and for the first time since she was capable of thought, she believed that Hester was going to be happy. Her own gain was almost too great for gratitude: a home, a brother, and relief from the responsibility of her sister’s peace—as often as she thought of these blessings, she looked almost as bright as Hester herself.How was Mr Hope, all this while? Well, and growing happier every day. He believed himself a perfectly happy man, and looked back with wonder to the struggle which it had cost him to accept his present lot. He was not only entirely recovered from his accident before the rich month of October came in, but truly thankful for it as the means of bringing to his knowledge, sooner at least, the devoted affection which he had inspired. It cannot but be animating, flattering, delightful to a man of strong domestic tendencies, to know himself the object of the exclusive attachment of a strong-minded and noble-hearted woman: and when, in addition to this, her society affords the delight of mental accomplishment and personal beauty, such as Hester’s, he must be a churl indeed if he does not greatly enjoy the present, and indulge in sweet anticipations for the future. Hope also brought the whole power of his will to bear upon his circumstances. He dwelt upon all the happiest features of his lot; and, in his admiration of Hester, thought as little as he could of Margaret. He had the daily delight of seeing how he constituted the new-born happiness of her whose life was to be devoted to him: he heard of nothing but rejoicings and blessings, and fully believed himself the happy man that every one declared him. He dwelt on the prospect of a home full of domestic attachment, of rational pursuit, of intellectual resource; and looked forward to a life of religious usefulness, of vigorous devotedness to others, of which he trusted that his first act of self-sacrifice and its consequences were the earnest and the pledge. He had never for a moment repented what he had done; and now, when he hastily recurred to the struggle it had cost him, it was chiefly to moralise on the short-sightedness of men in their wishes, and to be grateful for his own present satisfaction. A few cold misgivings had troubled him, and continued to trouble him, if Hester at any time looked at all less bright and serene than usual: but he concluded that these were merely the cloud-shadows which necessarily chequer all the sunshine of this world. He told himself that when two human beings become closely dependent on each other, their peace must hang upon the variations in one another’s moods; and that moods must vary in all mortals. He persuaded himself that this was a necessary consequence of the relation, and to be received as a slight set-off against the unfathomable blessings of sympathy. He concluded that he had deceived himself about his feelings for Margaret: he must have been mistaken; for he could now receive from her the opening confidence of a sister; he could cordially agree to the arrangement of her living with them; he could co-operate with her in the preparation for the coming time, without any emotion which was inconsistent with his duty to Hester. With unconscious prudence, he merely said this to himself, and let it pass, reverting to his beautiful, his happy, his own Hester, and the future years over which her image spread its sunshine. The one person who relished the task of preparation more than Margaret herself was Hope. Every advance in the work seemed to bring him nearer to the source of the happiness he felt. Every day of which they marked the lapse appeared to open wider the portals of that home which he was now more than ever habituated to view as the sanctuary of duty, of holiness, and of peace. All remarked on Mr Hope’s altered looks. The shyness and coldness with which he had seemed to receive the first congratulations on his engagement, and which excited wonder in many, and uneasiness in a few, had now given place to a gaiety only subdued by a more tender happiness. Even Mrs Grey need no longer watch his countenance and manner, and weigh his words with anxiety, and try to forget that there was a secret between them.One ground of Mr Hope’s confidence was Hester’s candour. She had truly told her sister, she felt it was no time for pride when he offered himself to her. Her pride was strong; but there was something in her as much stronger in force than her pride as it was higher in its nature; and she had owned her love with a frankness which had commanded his esteem as much as it engaged his generosity. She had made a no less open avowal of her faults to him. She had acknowledged the imperfections of her temper (the sorest of her troubles) both at the outset of their engagement, and often since. At first, the confession was made in an undoubting confidence that she should be reasonable, and amiable, and serene henceforth for ever, while she had him by her side. Subsequent experience had moderated this confidence into a hope that, by his example, and under his guidance, she should be enabled to surmount her failings. He shared this hope with her; pledged himself to her and to himself to forbear as he would be forborne; to aid her, and to honour her efforts; and he frequently declared, for his own satisfaction and hers, that all must be safe between them while such generous candour was the foundation of their intercourse,—a generosity and candour in whose noble presence superficial failings of temper were as nothing. He admitted that her temper was not perfect; and he must ever remember his own foreknowledge of this: but he must also bear in mind whence this foreknowledge was derived, and pay everlasting honour to the greatness of soul to which he owed it.An early day in December was fixed for the marriage, and no cause of delay occurred. There happened to be no patients so dangerously ill as to prevent Mr Hope’s absence for his brief wedding trip; the work-people were as nearly punctual as could be expected, and the house was all but ready. The wedding was really to take place, therefore, though Mrs Rowland gave out that in her opinion the engagement had been a surprisingly short one; that she hoped the young people knew what they were about, while all their friends were in such a hurry; that it was a wretched time of year for a wedding; and that, in her opinion, it would have been much pleasanter to wait for fine spring weather.As it happened, the weather was finer than it had been almost any day of the preceding spring. The day before the wedding was sunny and mild as an October morning, and the fires seemed to be blazing more for show than use. When Mr Hope dropped in at the Greys’, at two o’clock, he found the family dining. It was a fancy of Mrs Grey’s to dine early on what she considered busy days. An early dinner was, with her, a specific for the despatch of business. On this day, the arrangement was rather absurd; for the great evil of the time was, that everything was done, except what could not be transacted till the evening; and the hours were actually hanging heavy on the hands of some members of the family. Morris had packed Hester’s clothes for her little journey, and put out of sight all the mourning of both sisters, except what they actually had on. Sophia’s dress for the next morning was laid out, in readiness to be put on, and the preparations for the breakfast were as complete as they could be twenty hours beforehand. It only remained to take a final view of the house in the evening (when the children’s presents were to be discovered), and to cut the wedding-cake. In the interval, there was nothing to be done. Conversation flagged; every one was dull; and it was a relief to the rest when Mr Hope proposed to Hester to take a walk.Mrs Rowland would have laughed at the idea of a walk on a December afternoon, if she had happened to know of the circumstance; but others than lovers might have considered it pleasant. The sun was still an hour from its setting; and high in the pale heaven was the large moon, ready to shine upon the fields and woods, and shed a milder day. No frost had yet bound up the earth; it had only stripped the trees with a touch as gentle as that of the fruit-gatherer. No wintry gusts had yet swept through the woods; and all there was this day as still as in the autumn noon, when the nut is heard to drop upon the fallen leaves, and the light squirrel is startled at the rustle along its own path. As a matter of course, the lovers took their way to the Spring in the Vernon woods, the spot which had witnessed more of their confidence than any other. In the alcove above it they had taken shelter from the summer storm and the autumn shower; they had sat on its brink for many an hour, when the pure depths of its rocky basin seemed like coolness itself in the midst of heat, and when falling leaves fluttered down the wind, and dimpled the surface of the water. They now paused once more under shelter of the rock which overhung one side of the basin, and listened to the trickle of the spring. If “aside the devil turned for envy” in the presence of the pair in Paradise, it might be thought that he would take flight from this scene also; from the view of this resting of the lovers on their marriage eve, when the last sun of their separate lives was sinking, and the separate business of their existence was finished, and their paths had met before the gate of their paradise, and they were only waiting for the portal to open to them. But there was that on Hester’s brow which would have made the devil look closer. She was discomposed, and her replies to what was said were brief, and not much to the purpose. After a few moments’ silence, Mr Hope said gaily—“There is something on our minds, Hester. Come, what is it?”“Do not say ‘our minds.’ You know you never have anything on yours. I believe it is against your nature; and I know it is against your principles. Do not say ‘our minds.’”“I say it because it is true. I never see you look grave but my heart is as heavy—. But never mind that. What is the matter, love?”“Nothing,” sighed Hester. “Nothing that any one can help—. People may say what they will, Edward: but there can be no escape from living alone in this world, after all.”“Whatdoyou mean?”“I mean what no one, not even you, can gainsay. I mean that ‘the heart knoweth its own bitterness;’ that we have disappointments, and anxieties, and remorse, and many, many kinds of trouble that we can never tell to any human being—that none have any concern with—that we should never dare to tell. We must be alone in the world, after all.”“Where is your faith, while you feel so?” asked Edward, smiling. “Do you really think that confidence proceeds only while people believe each other perfect,—while they have not anxieties, and disappointments, and remorse? Do you not feel that our faults, or rather our failures, bind us together?”“Our faults bind us together!” exclaimed Hester. “Oh how happy I should be, if I could think that!”“We cannot but think it. We shall find it so, love, every day. When our faith fails, when we are discouraged, instead of fighting the battle with our faithlessness alone, we shall come to one another for courage, for stimulus, for help to see the bright, the true side of everything.”“That supposes that we can do so,” said Hester, sadly. “But I cannot. I have all my life intended to repose entire confidence, and I have never done it yet.”“Yes: you have in me. You cannot help it. You think that you cannot, only because you mean more by reposing confidence than others do. Your spirit is too noble, too ingenuous, too humble for concealment. You cannot help yourself, Hester: you have fully confided in me, and you will go on to do so.”Hester shook her head mournfully. “I have done it hitherto with you, and with you only,” said she: “and the mason has been—you know the reason—the same which made me own all to you, that first evening in the shrubbery. Ah! I see you think that this is a lasting security; that, as you will never change, I never shall: but you do not understand me wholly yet. There is something that you do not know,—that I cannot make you believe: but you will find it true, when it is too late. No good influence is permanent with me; many, all have been tried; and the evil that is in me gets the better of them all at last.”She snatched her hand from her lover’s, and covered her face to hide her tears.“I shall not contradict you, Hester,” said he, tenderly, “because you will only abase yourself the more in your own eyes. But tell me again—where is your faith, while you let spectres from the past glide over into the future, to terrify you? I say ‘you’ and not ‘us,’ because I am not terrified. I fear nothing. I trust you, and I trust Him who brought us together, and moved you to lay open your honest heart to me.”“My sick heart, Edward. It is sick with fear. I thought I had got over it. I thought you had cured it; and that now, on this day, of all days, I should have been full of your spirit—of the spirit which made me so happy a few weeks ago, that I was sure I should never fall back again. But I am disappointed in myself, Edward—wholly disappointed in myself. I have often been so before, but this time it is fatal. I shall never make you happy, Edward.”“Neither God nor man requires it of you, Hester. Dismiss it—.”“Oh, hear me!” cried Hester, in great agitation. “I vowed to devote myself to my father’s happiness, when my mother died; I promised to place the most absolute confidence in him. I failed. I fancied miserable things. I fancied he loved Margaret better; and that I was not necessary to him; and I was too proud, too selfish, to tell him so: and when he was dying, and commended Margaret and me to each other—Oh, so solemnly!—I am sure it was in compassion to me—and I shrank from it, even at that moment. When we came here, and Margaret and I felt ourselves alone among strangers, we promised the same confidence I vowed to my father. The next thing was—perhaps you saw it—I grew jealous of Margaret’s having another friend, though Maria was as ready to be my friend as hers, if I had only been worthy of it. Up to this hour—at this very moment, I believe I am jealous of Maria—and with Margaret before my eyes—Margaret, who loves me as her own soul, and yet has never felt one moment’s jealousy of you, I am certain, if her heart was known.”“We will rejoice, then, in Margaret’s peace of mind, the reward of her faith.”“Oh, so I do! I bless God that she is rewarded, better than by me. But you see how it is. You see how I poison every one’s life. I never made anybody happy! I never shall make anyone happy!”“Let us put the thought of making happiness out of our minds altogether,” said Hope. “I am persuaded that half the misery in the world comes of straining after happiness.”“After our own,” said Hester. “I could give up my own. But yours! I cannot put yours out of my thoughts.”“Yes, you can; and you will when you give your faith fair play. Why cannot you trust God with my happiness as well as your own? And why cannot you trust me to do without happiness, if it be necessary, as well as yourself?”“I know,” said Hester, “that you are as willing to forego all for me as I am for you; but I cannot, I dare not, consent to the risk. Oh, Edward! if ever you wished to give me ease, do what I ask now! Give me up! I shall make you wretched. Give me up, Edward!”Hope’s spirit was for one instant wrapped in storm. He recoiled from the future, and at the moment of recoil came this offer of release. One moment’s thought of freedom, one moment’s thought of Margaret convulsed his soul; but before he could speak the tempest had passed away. Hester’s face, frightfully agitated, was upraised: his countenance seemed heavenly to her when he smiled upon her, and replied—“I will not. You are mine; and, as I said before, all our failures, all our heart-sickness, must bind us the more to each other.”“Then you must sustain me—you must cure me—you must do what no one has ever yet been able to do. But above all, Edward, you must never, happen what may, cast me off.”“That is, as you say, what no one has ever been able to do,” said he, smiling. “Your father’s tenderness was greatest at the last; and Margaret loves you, you know, as her own soul. Let us avoid promises, but let us rest upon these truths. And now,” continued he, as he drew nearer to her, and made his shoulder a resting-place for her throbbing head, “I have heard your thoughts for the future. Will you hear mine?”Hester made an effort to still her weeping.“I said just now, that I believe half the misery in our lives is owing to straining after happiness; and I think, too, that much of our sin is owing to our disturbing ourselves too much about our duty. Instead of yielding a glad obedience from hour to hour, it is the weakness of many of us to stretch far forward into the future, which is beyond our present reach, and torment ourselves with apprehensions of sin, which we should be ashamed of if they related to pain and danger.”“Oh, if you could prove to me that such is my weakness!” cried Hester.“I believe that it is yours, and I know that it is my own, my Hester. We must watch over one another. Tell me, is it not faithless to let our hearts be troubled aboutanypossible evil which we cannot, at the moment of the trouble, prevent? And are we not sacrificing, what is, at the time, of the most importance—our repose of mind, the holiness, the religion of the hour?”“I know I have defiled the holiness of this hour,” said Hester, humbly. “But as my thoughts were troubled, was it not better to speak them? I could not but speak them.”“You cannot but do and speak what is most honourable, and true, and generous, Hester; and that is the very reason why I would fain have you trust, for the future as well as the present, to the impulse of the hour. Surely, love, the probation of the hour is enough for the strength of every one of us.”“Far, far too much for me.”“At times, too much for all. Well, then, what have we to do? To rest the care of each other’s happiness upon Him whose care it is: to be ready to do without it, as we would hold ourselves ready to do without this, or that, or the other comfort, or supposed means of happiness. Depend upon it, this happiness is too subtle and too divine a thing for our management. We have nothing to do with it but to enjoy it when it comes. Men say of it—‘Lo! it is here!’—‘Lo! there!’—but never has man laid hold of it with a voluntary grasp.”“But we can banish it,” said Hester.“Alas! yes: and what else do we do at the very moment when we afflict ourselves about the future? Surely our business is to keep our hearts open for it—holy and at peace, from moment to moment, from day to day.”“And yet, is it not our privilege—said at least to be so—to look before and after? I am not sure, however, that I always think this a privilege. I long sometimes to be any bird of the air, that I might live for the present moment alone.”“Let us be so far birds of the air—free as they, neither toiling nor spinning out anxious thoughts for the future: but why, with all this, should we not use our human privilege of looking before and after, to enrich and sanctify the present? Should we enjoy the wheat-fields in June as we do if we knew nothing of seed-time, and had never heard of harvest? And how should you and I feel at this moment, sitting here, if we had no recollection of walks in shrubberies, and no prospect of a home, and a lifetime to spend in it, to make this moment sacred? Look at those red-breasts: shall we change lots with them?”“No, no: let us look forward; but how? We cannot persuade ourselves that we are better than we are, for the sake of making the future bright.”“True: and therefore it must be God’s future, and not our own, that we must look forward to.”“That is for confessors and martyrs,” said Hester. “They can look peacefully before and after, when there is a bright life and a world of hopes lying behind; and nothing around and before them but ignominy and poverty, or prison, or torture, or death. They can do this: but not such as I. God’s future is enough for them—the triumph of truth and holiness; but—.”“And I believe it would be enough for you in their situation, Hester. I believe you could be a martyr for opinion. Why cannot you and I brave the suffering of our own faults as we would meet sickness or bereavement from Heaven, and torture and death from men?”“Is this the prospect in view of which you marry me?”“It is the prospect in view of which all of us are ever living, since we are all faulty, and must all suffer. But marriage justifies a holier and happier anticipation. The faults of human beings are temporary features of their prospect: their virtues are the firm ground under their feet, and the bright arch over their heads. Is it not so?”“If so, how selfish, how ungrateful have I been in making myself and you so miserable! But I do so fear myself!”“Let us fear nothing, but give all our care to the day and the hour. I am confident that this is the true obedience, and the true wisdom. If the temper of the hour is right, nothing is wrong.”“And I am sure, if the temper of the hour is wrong, nothing is right. If one could always remember this—.”“If we could always remember this, we should perhaps find ourselves a little above the angels, instead of being, like the serene, the Fénélons of our race, a little below them. We shall not always remember it, love; but we must remind each other as faithfully as may be.”“You must bring me here, when I forget,” said Hester. “This spring will always murmur the truth to me—‘If the temper of the hour is right nothing is wrong.’ How wrong has my temper been within this hour!”“Let it pass, my Hester. We are all faithless at times, and without the excuse of meek and anxious love. Is it possible that the moon casts that shadow?”“The dark, dark hour is gone,” said Hester, smiling as she looked up, and the moon shone on her face. “Nothing is wrong. Who would have believed, an hour ago, that I should now say so?”“When you would have given me up,” said Hope, smiling. “Oh, let us forget it all! Let us go somewhere else. Who will say this is winter? Is it October, or ‘the first mild day of March?’ It might be either.”“There is not a breath to chill us; and these leaves—what a soft autumn carpet they make! They have no wintry crispness yet.”There was one inexhaustible subject to which they now recurred—Mr Hope’s family. He told over again, what Hester was never weary of hearing, how his sisters would cherish her, whenever circumstances should allow them to meet—how Emily and she would suit best, but how Anne would look up to her. As for Frank—. But this representation of what Frank would say, and think, and do, was somewhat checked and impaired by the recollection that Frank was just about this time receiving the letter in which Margaret’s superiority to Hester was pretty plainly set forth. The answer to that letter would arrive, some time or other, and the anticipated awkwardness of that circumstance caused some unpleasant feelings at this moment, as it had often done before, during the last few weeks. Nothing could be easier than to set the matter right with Frank, as was already done with Emily and Anne; the first letter might occasion some difficulty. Frank was passed over lightly, and the foreground of the picture of family welcome was occupied by Emily and Anne.It was almost an hour from their leaving the Spring before the lovers reached home. They were neither cold nor tired; they were neither merry nor sad. The traces of tears were on Hester’s face; but even Margaret was satisfied when she saw her leaning on Edward’s arm, receiving the presents of the children where alone the children would present them—in the new house. There was no fancy about the arrangements, no ceremony about the cake and the ring, to which Hester did not submit with perfect grace. Notwithstanding the traces of her tears, she had never looked so beautiful.The same opinion was repeated the next morning by all the many who saw her in church, or who caught a glimpse of her, in her way to and from it. No wedding was ever kept a secret in Deerbrook; and Mr Hope’s was the one in which concealment was least of all possible. The church was half full, and the path to the church-door was lined with gazers. Those who were obliged to remain at home looked abroad from their doors; so that all were gratified more or less. Every one on Mr Grey’s premises had a holiday—including Miss Young, though Mrs Rowland did not see why her children should lose a day’s instruction, because a distant cousin of Mr Grey’s was married. The marriage was made far too much a fuss of for her taste; and she vowed that whenever she parted with her own Matilda, there should be a much greater refinement in the mode. Every one else appeared satisfied. The sun shone; the bells rang; and the servants drank the health of the bride and bridegroom. Margaret succeeded in swallowing her tears, and was, in her inmost soul, thankful for Hester and herself. The letters to Mr Hope’s sisters and brother, left open for the signatures of Edward and Hester Hope, were closed and despatched; and the news was communicated to two or three of the Ibbotsons’ nearest friends at Birmingham. Mr and Mrs Grey agreed, at the end of the day, that a wedding was, to be sure, a most fatiguing affair for quiet people like themselves; but that nothing could have gone off better.

The affair proceeded rapidly, as such affairs should do where there is no reason for delay. There was no more talk of Birmingham. The journey which was to have been taken in a few days was not spoken of again. The external arrangements advanced well, so many as there were anxious about this part of the matter, and accomplished in habits of business. Mr Rowland was happy to let the corner-house to Mr Hope, not even taking advantage, as his lady advised, of its being peculiarly fit for a surgeon’s residence, from its having a door round the corner (made to be a surgery-door!), to raise the rent. Mr Rowland behaved handsomely about everything, rent, alterations, painting, and papering, and laying out the garden anew. Mr Grey bestirred himself to get the affairs at Birmingham settled; and he was soon enabled to inform Mr Hope that Hester’s fortune was ascertained, and that it was smaller than could have been wished. He believed his cousins would have seventy pounds a-year each, and no more. It was some compensation for the mortifying nature of this announcement, that Mr Hope evidently did not care at all about the matter. He was not an ambitious, nor yet a luxurious man: his practice supplied an income sufficient for the ease of young married people, and it was on the increase.

No one seemed to doubt for a moment that Margaret would live with her sister. There was no other home for her; she and Hester had never been parted; there seemed no reason for their parting now, and every inducement for their remaining together. Margaret did not dream of objecting to this: she only made it a condition that fifty pounds of her yearly income should go into the family-stock, thus saving her from obligation to any one for her maintenance. Living was so cheap in Deerbrook, that Margaret was assured that she would render herself quite independent by paying fifty pounds a-year for her share of the household expenses, and reserving twenty for her personal wants.

Both the sisters were surprised to find how much pleasure they took in the preparations for this marriage. They could not have believed it, and, but that they were too happy to feel any kind of contempt, they would have despised themselves for it. But such contempt would have been misplaced. All things are according to the ideas and feelings with which they are connected; and if, as old George Herbert says, dusting a room is an act of religious grace when it is done from a feeling of religious duty, furnishing a house is a process of high enjoyment when it is the preparation of a home for happy love. The dwelling is hung all round with bright anticipations, and crowded with blissful thoughts, spoken by none, perhaps, but present to all. On this table, and by this snug fireside, will the cheerful winter breakfast go forward, when each is about to enter on the gladsome business of the day; and that sofa will be drawn out, and those window-curtains will be closed, when the intellectual pleasures of the evening—the rewards of the laborious day—begin. Those ground-windows will stand open all the summer noon, and the flower stands will be gay and fragrant; and the shaded parlour will be the cool retreat of the wearied husband, when he comes in to rest from his professional toils. There will stand the books destined to refresh and refine his higher tastes; and there the music with which the wife will indulge him. Here will they first feel what it is to have a home of their own—where they will first enjoy the privacy of it, the security, the freedom, the consequence in the eyes of others, the sacredness in their own. Here they will first exercise the graces of hospitality, and the responsibility of control. Here will they feel that they have attained the great resting-place of their life—the resting-place of their individual lot, but only the starting-point of their activity. Such is the work of furnishing a house once in a lifetime. It may be a welcome task to the fine lady, decking her drawing-room anew, to gratify her ambition, or divert herennui—it may be a satisfactory labour to the elderly couple, settling themselves afresh when their children are dispersed abroad, and it becomes necessary to discard the furniture that the boys have battered and spoiled—it may be a refined amusement to the selfish man of taste, wishing to prolong or recall the pleasures of foreign travel; but to none is it the conscious delight that it is to young lovers and their sympathising friends, whether the scene be the two rooms of the hopeful young artisan, about to bring home his bride from service; or the palace of a nobleman, enriched with intellectual luxuries for the lady of his adoration; or the quiet abode of an unambitious professional man, whose aim is privacy and comfort.

Margaret’s delight in the process of preparation was the most intense of all that was felt, except perhaps by one person. Mrs Grey and Sophia enjoyed the bustle, and the consequence, and the exercise of their feminine talents, and the gossip of the village, and the spitefulness of Mrs Rowland’s criticisms, when she had recovered from her delight at her brother’s escape from Hester, and had leisure to be offended at Mr Hope’s marrying into the Grey connexion so decidedly. The children relished the mystery of buying their presents secretly, and hiding them from their cousins, till the day before the wedding. Sydney was proud to help Margaret in training the chrysanthemums, putting the garden into winter trim, and in planting round the walls of the surgery with large evergreens. Mr Grey came down almost every evening to suggest and approve; and Morris left her needle (now busy from morning till night in Hester’s service) to admire, and to speak her wishes, when desired, about the preparations in her department. Morris, another maid, and a foot-boy, were the only servants; and Morris was to have everything as she liked best for her own region. But Margaret was as eager and interested as all the rest together. Her heart was light for her sister; and for the first time since she was capable of thought, she believed that Hester was going to be happy. Her own gain was almost too great for gratitude: a home, a brother, and relief from the responsibility of her sister’s peace—as often as she thought of these blessings, she looked almost as bright as Hester herself.

How was Mr Hope, all this while? Well, and growing happier every day. He believed himself a perfectly happy man, and looked back with wonder to the struggle which it had cost him to accept his present lot. He was not only entirely recovered from his accident before the rich month of October came in, but truly thankful for it as the means of bringing to his knowledge, sooner at least, the devoted affection which he had inspired. It cannot but be animating, flattering, delightful to a man of strong domestic tendencies, to know himself the object of the exclusive attachment of a strong-minded and noble-hearted woman: and when, in addition to this, her society affords the delight of mental accomplishment and personal beauty, such as Hester’s, he must be a churl indeed if he does not greatly enjoy the present, and indulge in sweet anticipations for the future. Hope also brought the whole power of his will to bear upon his circumstances. He dwelt upon all the happiest features of his lot; and, in his admiration of Hester, thought as little as he could of Margaret. He had the daily delight of seeing how he constituted the new-born happiness of her whose life was to be devoted to him: he heard of nothing but rejoicings and blessings, and fully believed himself the happy man that every one declared him. He dwelt on the prospect of a home full of domestic attachment, of rational pursuit, of intellectual resource; and looked forward to a life of religious usefulness, of vigorous devotedness to others, of which he trusted that his first act of self-sacrifice and its consequences were the earnest and the pledge. He had never for a moment repented what he had done; and now, when he hastily recurred to the struggle it had cost him, it was chiefly to moralise on the short-sightedness of men in their wishes, and to be grateful for his own present satisfaction. A few cold misgivings had troubled him, and continued to trouble him, if Hester at any time looked at all less bright and serene than usual: but he concluded that these were merely the cloud-shadows which necessarily chequer all the sunshine of this world. He told himself that when two human beings become closely dependent on each other, their peace must hang upon the variations in one another’s moods; and that moods must vary in all mortals. He persuaded himself that this was a necessary consequence of the relation, and to be received as a slight set-off against the unfathomable blessings of sympathy. He concluded that he had deceived himself about his feelings for Margaret: he must have been mistaken; for he could now receive from her the opening confidence of a sister; he could cordially agree to the arrangement of her living with them; he could co-operate with her in the preparation for the coming time, without any emotion which was inconsistent with his duty to Hester. With unconscious prudence, he merely said this to himself, and let it pass, reverting to his beautiful, his happy, his own Hester, and the future years over which her image spread its sunshine. The one person who relished the task of preparation more than Margaret herself was Hope. Every advance in the work seemed to bring him nearer to the source of the happiness he felt. Every day of which they marked the lapse appeared to open wider the portals of that home which he was now more than ever habituated to view as the sanctuary of duty, of holiness, and of peace. All remarked on Mr Hope’s altered looks. The shyness and coldness with which he had seemed to receive the first congratulations on his engagement, and which excited wonder in many, and uneasiness in a few, had now given place to a gaiety only subdued by a more tender happiness. Even Mrs Grey need no longer watch his countenance and manner, and weigh his words with anxiety, and try to forget that there was a secret between them.

One ground of Mr Hope’s confidence was Hester’s candour. She had truly told her sister, she felt it was no time for pride when he offered himself to her. Her pride was strong; but there was something in her as much stronger in force than her pride as it was higher in its nature; and she had owned her love with a frankness which had commanded his esteem as much as it engaged his generosity. She had made a no less open avowal of her faults to him. She had acknowledged the imperfections of her temper (the sorest of her troubles) both at the outset of their engagement, and often since. At first, the confession was made in an undoubting confidence that she should be reasonable, and amiable, and serene henceforth for ever, while she had him by her side. Subsequent experience had moderated this confidence into a hope that, by his example, and under his guidance, she should be enabled to surmount her failings. He shared this hope with her; pledged himself to her and to himself to forbear as he would be forborne; to aid her, and to honour her efforts; and he frequently declared, for his own satisfaction and hers, that all must be safe between them while such generous candour was the foundation of their intercourse,—a generosity and candour in whose noble presence superficial failings of temper were as nothing. He admitted that her temper was not perfect; and he must ever remember his own foreknowledge of this: but he must also bear in mind whence this foreknowledge was derived, and pay everlasting honour to the greatness of soul to which he owed it.

An early day in December was fixed for the marriage, and no cause of delay occurred. There happened to be no patients so dangerously ill as to prevent Mr Hope’s absence for his brief wedding trip; the work-people were as nearly punctual as could be expected, and the house was all but ready. The wedding was really to take place, therefore, though Mrs Rowland gave out that in her opinion the engagement had been a surprisingly short one; that she hoped the young people knew what they were about, while all their friends were in such a hurry; that it was a wretched time of year for a wedding; and that, in her opinion, it would have been much pleasanter to wait for fine spring weather.

As it happened, the weather was finer than it had been almost any day of the preceding spring. The day before the wedding was sunny and mild as an October morning, and the fires seemed to be blazing more for show than use. When Mr Hope dropped in at the Greys’, at two o’clock, he found the family dining. It was a fancy of Mrs Grey’s to dine early on what she considered busy days. An early dinner was, with her, a specific for the despatch of business. On this day, the arrangement was rather absurd; for the great evil of the time was, that everything was done, except what could not be transacted till the evening; and the hours were actually hanging heavy on the hands of some members of the family. Morris had packed Hester’s clothes for her little journey, and put out of sight all the mourning of both sisters, except what they actually had on. Sophia’s dress for the next morning was laid out, in readiness to be put on, and the preparations for the breakfast were as complete as they could be twenty hours beforehand. It only remained to take a final view of the house in the evening (when the children’s presents were to be discovered), and to cut the wedding-cake. In the interval, there was nothing to be done. Conversation flagged; every one was dull; and it was a relief to the rest when Mr Hope proposed to Hester to take a walk.

Mrs Rowland would have laughed at the idea of a walk on a December afternoon, if she had happened to know of the circumstance; but others than lovers might have considered it pleasant. The sun was still an hour from its setting; and high in the pale heaven was the large moon, ready to shine upon the fields and woods, and shed a milder day. No frost had yet bound up the earth; it had only stripped the trees with a touch as gentle as that of the fruit-gatherer. No wintry gusts had yet swept through the woods; and all there was this day as still as in the autumn noon, when the nut is heard to drop upon the fallen leaves, and the light squirrel is startled at the rustle along its own path. As a matter of course, the lovers took their way to the Spring in the Vernon woods, the spot which had witnessed more of their confidence than any other. In the alcove above it they had taken shelter from the summer storm and the autumn shower; they had sat on its brink for many an hour, when the pure depths of its rocky basin seemed like coolness itself in the midst of heat, and when falling leaves fluttered down the wind, and dimpled the surface of the water. They now paused once more under shelter of the rock which overhung one side of the basin, and listened to the trickle of the spring. If “aside the devil turned for envy” in the presence of the pair in Paradise, it might be thought that he would take flight from this scene also; from the view of this resting of the lovers on their marriage eve, when the last sun of their separate lives was sinking, and the separate business of their existence was finished, and their paths had met before the gate of their paradise, and they were only waiting for the portal to open to them. But there was that on Hester’s brow which would have made the devil look closer. She was discomposed, and her replies to what was said were brief, and not much to the purpose. After a few moments’ silence, Mr Hope said gaily—

“There is something on our minds, Hester. Come, what is it?”

“Do not say ‘our minds.’ You know you never have anything on yours. I believe it is against your nature; and I know it is against your principles. Do not say ‘our minds.’”

“I say it because it is true. I never see you look grave but my heart is as heavy—. But never mind that. What is the matter, love?”

“Nothing,” sighed Hester. “Nothing that any one can help—. People may say what they will, Edward: but there can be no escape from living alone in this world, after all.”

“Whatdoyou mean?”

“I mean what no one, not even you, can gainsay. I mean that ‘the heart knoweth its own bitterness;’ that we have disappointments, and anxieties, and remorse, and many, many kinds of trouble that we can never tell to any human being—that none have any concern with—that we should never dare to tell. We must be alone in the world, after all.”

“Where is your faith, while you feel so?” asked Edward, smiling. “Do you really think that confidence proceeds only while people believe each other perfect,—while they have not anxieties, and disappointments, and remorse? Do you not feel that our faults, or rather our failures, bind us together?”

“Our faults bind us together!” exclaimed Hester. “Oh how happy I should be, if I could think that!”

“We cannot but think it. We shall find it so, love, every day. When our faith fails, when we are discouraged, instead of fighting the battle with our faithlessness alone, we shall come to one another for courage, for stimulus, for help to see the bright, the true side of everything.”

“That supposes that we can do so,” said Hester, sadly. “But I cannot. I have all my life intended to repose entire confidence, and I have never done it yet.”

“Yes: you have in me. You cannot help it. You think that you cannot, only because you mean more by reposing confidence than others do. Your spirit is too noble, too ingenuous, too humble for concealment. You cannot help yourself, Hester: you have fully confided in me, and you will go on to do so.”

Hester shook her head mournfully. “I have done it hitherto with you, and with you only,” said she: “and the mason has been—you know the reason—the same which made me own all to you, that first evening in the shrubbery. Ah! I see you think that this is a lasting security; that, as you will never change, I never shall: but you do not understand me wholly yet. There is something that you do not know,—that I cannot make you believe: but you will find it true, when it is too late. No good influence is permanent with me; many, all have been tried; and the evil that is in me gets the better of them all at last.”

She snatched her hand from her lover’s, and covered her face to hide her tears.

“I shall not contradict you, Hester,” said he, tenderly, “because you will only abase yourself the more in your own eyes. But tell me again—where is your faith, while you let spectres from the past glide over into the future, to terrify you? I say ‘you’ and not ‘us,’ because I am not terrified. I fear nothing. I trust you, and I trust Him who brought us together, and moved you to lay open your honest heart to me.”

“My sick heart, Edward. It is sick with fear. I thought I had got over it. I thought you had cured it; and that now, on this day, of all days, I should have been full of your spirit—of the spirit which made me so happy a few weeks ago, that I was sure I should never fall back again. But I am disappointed in myself, Edward—wholly disappointed in myself. I have often been so before, but this time it is fatal. I shall never make you happy, Edward.”

“Neither God nor man requires it of you, Hester. Dismiss it—.”

“Oh, hear me!” cried Hester, in great agitation. “I vowed to devote myself to my father’s happiness, when my mother died; I promised to place the most absolute confidence in him. I failed. I fancied miserable things. I fancied he loved Margaret better; and that I was not necessary to him; and I was too proud, too selfish, to tell him so: and when he was dying, and commended Margaret and me to each other—Oh, so solemnly!—I am sure it was in compassion to me—and I shrank from it, even at that moment. When we came here, and Margaret and I felt ourselves alone among strangers, we promised the same confidence I vowed to my father. The next thing was—perhaps you saw it—I grew jealous of Margaret’s having another friend, though Maria was as ready to be my friend as hers, if I had only been worthy of it. Up to this hour—at this very moment, I believe I am jealous of Maria—and with Margaret before my eyes—Margaret, who loves me as her own soul, and yet has never felt one moment’s jealousy of you, I am certain, if her heart was known.”

“We will rejoice, then, in Margaret’s peace of mind, the reward of her faith.”

“Oh, so I do! I bless God that she is rewarded, better than by me. But you see how it is. You see how I poison every one’s life. I never made anybody happy! I never shall make anyone happy!”

“Let us put the thought of making happiness out of our minds altogether,” said Hope. “I am persuaded that half the misery in the world comes of straining after happiness.”

“After our own,” said Hester. “I could give up my own. But yours! I cannot put yours out of my thoughts.”

“Yes, you can; and you will when you give your faith fair play. Why cannot you trust God with my happiness as well as your own? And why cannot you trust me to do without happiness, if it be necessary, as well as yourself?”

“I know,” said Hester, “that you are as willing to forego all for me as I am for you; but I cannot, I dare not, consent to the risk. Oh, Edward! if ever you wished to give me ease, do what I ask now! Give me up! I shall make you wretched. Give me up, Edward!”

Hope’s spirit was for one instant wrapped in storm. He recoiled from the future, and at the moment of recoil came this offer of release. One moment’s thought of freedom, one moment’s thought of Margaret convulsed his soul; but before he could speak the tempest had passed away. Hester’s face, frightfully agitated, was upraised: his countenance seemed heavenly to her when he smiled upon her, and replied—

“I will not. You are mine; and, as I said before, all our failures, all our heart-sickness, must bind us the more to each other.”

“Then you must sustain me—you must cure me—you must do what no one has ever yet been able to do. But above all, Edward, you must never, happen what may, cast me off.”

“That is, as you say, what no one has ever been able to do,” said he, smiling. “Your father’s tenderness was greatest at the last; and Margaret loves you, you know, as her own soul. Let us avoid promises, but let us rest upon these truths. And now,” continued he, as he drew nearer to her, and made his shoulder a resting-place for her throbbing head, “I have heard your thoughts for the future. Will you hear mine?”

Hester made an effort to still her weeping.

“I said just now, that I believe half the misery in our lives is owing to straining after happiness; and I think, too, that much of our sin is owing to our disturbing ourselves too much about our duty. Instead of yielding a glad obedience from hour to hour, it is the weakness of many of us to stretch far forward into the future, which is beyond our present reach, and torment ourselves with apprehensions of sin, which we should be ashamed of if they related to pain and danger.”

“Oh, if you could prove to me that such is my weakness!” cried Hester.

“I believe that it is yours, and I know that it is my own, my Hester. We must watch over one another. Tell me, is it not faithless to let our hearts be troubled aboutanypossible evil which we cannot, at the moment of the trouble, prevent? And are we not sacrificing, what is, at the time, of the most importance—our repose of mind, the holiness, the religion of the hour?”

“I know I have defiled the holiness of this hour,” said Hester, humbly. “But as my thoughts were troubled, was it not better to speak them? I could not but speak them.”

“You cannot but do and speak what is most honourable, and true, and generous, Hester; and that is the very reason why I would fain have you trust, for the future as well as the present, to the impulse of the hour. Surely, love, the probation of the hour is enough for the strength of every one of us.”

“Far, far too much for me.”

“At times, too much for all. Well, then, what have we to do? To rest the care of each other’s happiness upon Him whose care it is: to be ready to do without it, as we would hold ourselves ready to do without this, or that, or the other comfort, or supposed means of happiness. Depend upon it, this happiness is too subtle and too divine a thing for our management. We have nothing to do with it but to enjoy it when it comes. Men say of it—‘Lo! it is here!’—‘Lo! there!’—but never has man laid hold of it with a voluntary grasp.”

“But we can banish it,” said Hester.

“Alas! yes: and what else do we do at the very moment when we afflict ourselves about the future? Surely our business is to keep our hearts open for it—holy and at peace, from moment to moment, from day to day.”

“And yet, is it not our privilege—said at least to be so—to look before and after? I am not sure, however, that I always think this a privilege. I long sometimes to be any bird of the air, that I might live for the present moment alone.”

“Let us be so far birds of the air—free as they, neither toiling nor spinning out anxious thoughts for the future: but why, with all this, should we not use our human privilege of looking before and after, to enrich and sanctify the present? Should we enjoy the wheat-fields in June as we do if we knew nothing of seed-time, and had never heard of harvest? And how should you and I feel at this moment, sitting here, if we had no recollection of walks in shrubberies, and no prospect of a home, and a lifetime to spend in it, to make this moment sacred? Look at those red-breasts: shall we change lots with them?”

“No, no: let us look forward; but how? We cannot persuade ourselves that we are better than we are, for the sake of making the future bright.”

“True: and therefore it must be God’s future, and not our own, that we must look forward to.”

“That is for confessors and martyrs,” said Hester. “They can look peacefully before and after, when there is a bright life and a world of hopes lying behind; and nothing around and before them but ignominy and poverty, or prison, or torture, or death. They can do this: but not such as I. God’s future is enough for them—the triumph of truth and holiness; but—.”

“And I believe it would be enough for you in their situation, Hester. I believe you could be a martyr for opinion. Why cannot you and I brave the suffering of our own faults as we would meet sickness or bereavement from Heaven, and torture and death from men?”

“Is this the prospect in view of which you marry me?”

“It is the prospect in view of which all of us are ever living, since we are all faulty, and must all suffer. But marriage justifies a holier and happier anticipation. The faults of human beings are temporary features of their prospect: their virtues are the firm ground under their feet, and the bright arch over their heads. Is it not so?”

“If so, how selfish, how ungrateful have I been in making myself and you so miserable! But I do so fear myself!”

“Let us fear nothing, but give all our care to the day and the hour. I am confident that this is the true obedience, and the true wisdom. If the temper of the hour is right, nothing is wrong.”

“And I am sure, if the temper of the hour is wrong, nothing is right. If one could always remember this—.”

“If we could always remember this, we should perhaps find ourselves a little above the angels, instead of being, like the serene, the Fénélons of our race, a little below them. We shall not always remember it, love; but we must remind each other as faithfully as may be.”

“You must bring me here, when I forget,” said Hester. “This spring will always murmur the truth to me—‘If the temper of the hour is right nothing is wrong.’ How wrong has my temper been within this hour!”

“Let it pass, my Hester. We are all faithless at times, and without the excuse of meek and anxious love. Is it possible that the moon casts that shadow?”

“The dark, dark hour is gone,” said Hester, smiling as she looked up, and the moon shone on her face. “Nothing is wrong. Who would have believed, an hour ago, that I should now say so?”

“When you would have given me up,” said Hope, smiling. “Oh, let us forget it all! Let us go somewhere else. Who will say this is winter? Is it October, or ‘the first mild day of March?’ It might be either.”

“There is not a breath to chill us; and these leaves—what a soft autumn carpet they make! They have no wintry crispness yet.”

There was one inexhaustible subject to which they now recurred—Mr Hope’s family. He told over again, what Hester was never weary of hearing, how his sisters would cherish her, whenever circumstances should allow them to meet—how Emily and she would suit best, but how Anne would look up to her. As for Frank—. But this representation of what Frank would say, and think, and do, was somewhat checked and impaired by the recollection that Frank was just about this time receiving the letter in which Margaret’s superiority to Hester was pretty plainly set forth. The answer to that letter would arrive, some time or other, and the anticipated awkwardness of that circumstance caused some unpleasant feelings at this moment, as it had often done before, during the last few weeks. Nothing could be easier than to set the matter right with Frank, as was already done with Emily and Anne; the first letter might occasion some difficulty. Frank was passed over lightly, and the foreground of the picture of family welcome was occupied by Emily and Anne.

It was almost an hour from their leaving the Spring before the lovers reached home. They were neither cold nor tired; they were neither merry nor sad. The traces of tears were on Hester’s face; but even Margaret was satisfied when she saw her leaning on Edward’s arm, receiving the presents of the children where alone the children would present them—in the new house. There was no fancy about the arrangements, no ceremony about the cake and the ring, to which Hester did not submit with perfect grace. Notwithstanding the traces of her tears, she had never looked so beautiful.

The same opinion was repeated the next morning by all the many who saw her in church, or who caught a glimpse of her, in her way to and from it. No wedding was ever kept a secret in Deerbrook; and Mr Hope’s was the one in which concealment was least of all possible. The church was half full, and the path to the church-door was lined with gazers. Those who were obliged to remain at home looked abroad from their doors; so that all were gratified more or less. Every one on Mr Grey’s premises had a holiday—including Miss Young, though Mrs Rowland did not see why her children should lose a day’s instruction, because a distant cousin of Mr Grey’s was married. The marriage was made far too much a fuss of for her taste; and she vowed that whenever she parted with her own Matilda, there should be a much greater refinement in the mode. Every one else appeared satisfied. The sun shone; the bells rang; and the servants drank the health of the bride and bridegroom. Margaret succeeded in swallowing her tears, and was, in her inmost soul, thankful for Hester and herself. The letters to Mr Hope’s sisters and brother, left open for the signatures of Edward and Hester Hope, were closed and despatched; and the news was communicated to two or three of the Ibbotsons’ nearest friends at Birmingham. Mr and Mrs Grey agreed, at the end of the day, that a wedding was, to be sure, a most fatiguing affair for quiet people like themselves; but that nothing could have gone off better.

Chapter Fifteen.Maria and Margaret.Mr Hope’s professional duties would not permit him to be long absent, even on such an occasion as his wedding journey. The young couple went only to Oxford, and were to return in a week. Margaret thought that this week never would be over. It was not only that she longed for rest in a home once more, and was eager to repose upon her new privilege of having a brother: she was also anxious about Hester,—anxious to be convinced, by the observation of the eye and the hearing of the ear, that her sister was enjoying that peace of spirit which reason seemed to declare must be hers. It would be difficult to determine how much Margaret’s attachment to her sister was deepened and strengthened by the incessant solicitude she had felt for her, ever since this attachment had grown out of the companionship of their childhood. She could scarcely remember the time when she had not been in a state of either hope or fear for Hester;—hope that, in some new circumstances, she would be happy at last; or dread lest these new circumstances should fail, as all preceding influences had failed. If Hester had been less candid and less generous than she was, her sister’s affection might have given way under the repeated trials and disappointments it had had to sustain; and there were times when Margaret’s patiencehadgiven way, and she had for a brief while wished, and almost resolved, that she could and would regard with indifference the state of mind of one who was not reasonable, and who seemed incapable of being contented. But such resolutions of indifference dissolved before her sister’s next manifestations of generosity, or appeals to the forgiveness of those about her. Margaret always ended by supposing herself the cause of the evil; that she had been inconsiderate; that she could not allow sufficiently for a sensitiveness greater than her own; and above all, that she was not fully worthy of such affection as Hester’s—not sufficient for such a mind and heart. She had looked forward, with ardent expectation when she was happiest, and with sickly dread when she was depressed, to the event of Hester’s marriage, as that which must decide whether she could be happy, or whether her life was to be throughout the scene of conflict that its opening years had been. Hester’s connexion was all that she could have desired, and far beyond her utmost hopes. This brother-in-law was one of a thousand—one whom she was ready to consider a good angel sent to shed peace over her sister’s life: and during the months of her engagement, she had kept anxiety at bay, and resigned herself to the delights of gratitude and of sweet anticipations, and to the satisfaction of feeling that her own responsibilities might be considered at an end. She had delivered Hester’s happiness over into the charge of one who would cherish it better and more successfully than she had done; and she could not but feel the relief of the freedom she had gained: but neither could she repress her anxiety to know, at the outset, whether all was indeed as well as she had till now undoubtingly supposed that it would be.Margaret’s attachment to her sister would have been in greater danger of being worn out but for the existence of a closer sympathy between them than any one but themselves, and perhaps Morris, was aware of. Margaret had a strong suspicion that in Hester’s place her temper would have been exactly what Hester’s was in its least happy characteristics. She had tendencies to jealousy; and if not to morbid self-study, and to dissatisfaction with present circumstances, she was indebted for this, she knew, to her being occupied with her sister, and yet more to the perpetual warning held up before her eyes. This conviction generated no sense of superiority in Margaret—interfered in no degree with the reverence she entertained for Hester, a reverence rather enhanced than impaired by the tender compassion with which she regarded her mental conflicts and sufferings. Every movement of irritability in herself (and she was conscious of many) alarmed and humbled her, but, at the same time, enabled her better to make allowance for her sister; and every harsh word and unreasonable mood of Hester’s, by restoring her to her self-command and stimulating her magnanimity, made her sensible that she owed much of her power over herself to that circumstance which kept the necessity of it perpetually before her mind. For the same reason that men hate those whom they have injured, Margaret loved with unusual fervour the sister with whom she had to forbear. For the same reason that the children, even the affectionate children, of tyrannical or lax parents, love liberty and conscientiousness above all else, Margaret was in practice gentle, long-suffering, and forgetful of self. For the same reason that the afflicted are looked upon by the pure-minded as sacred, Margaret regarded her sister with a reverence which preserved her patience from being spent, and her attachment from wasting away.The first letter from her brother and sister had been opened in great internal agitation. All was well, however. It was certain that all was well; for, while Hester said not one word about being happy, she was full of thought for others. She knew that Margaret meant to take possession of the corner-house, to “go home,” a few days before the arrival of the travellers, in order to make all comfortable for them. Hester begged that she would take care to be well amused during these few days. Perhaps she might induce Maria Young to waive the ceremony of being first invited by the real housekeepers, and to spend as much time as she could with her friend. “Give my kind regards to Maria,” said the letter, “and tell her I like to fancy you two passing a long evening by that fireside where we all hope we shall often have the pleasure of seeing her.” Six months ago Hester would not have spoken so freely and so kindly of Maria: she would not have so sanctioned Margaret’s intimacy with her. All was right, and Margaret was happy.Maria came, and, thanks to the holiday spirit of a wedding week, for a long day. Delicious are the pleasures of those whose appetite for them is whetted by abstinence. Charming, wholly charming, was this day to Maria, spent in quiet, free from the children, free from the observation of other guests, passed in all external luxury, and in sister-like confidence with the friend to whom she had owed some of the best pleasures of the last year. Margaret was no less happy in indulging her, and in opening much more of her heart to her than she could to any one else since Hester married—which now, at the end of six days, seemed a long time ago.Miss Young came early, that she might see the house, and everything in it, before dark; and the days were now at their shortest. She did not mind the fatigue of mounting to the very top of the house. She must see the view from the window of Morris’s attic. Yesterday’s fall of snow had made the meadows one sheet of white; and the river looked black, and the woods somewhat frowning and dismal; but those who knew the place so well could imagine what all this must be in summer; and Morris was assured that her room was the pleasantest in the house. Morris curtseyed and smiled, and did not say how cold and dreary a wide landscape appeared to her, and how much better she should have liked to look out upon a street, if only Mr Hope had happened to have been settled in Birmingham. She pointed out to Maria how good Miss Hester had been, in thinking about the furnishing of this attic. She had taken the trouble to have the pictures of Morris’s father and mother, which had always hung opposite her bed at Birmingham, brought hither, and fixed up in the same place. The bed-hangings had come, too; so that, except for its being so much lighter, and the prospect from the window so different, it was almost like the same room she had slept in for three-and-twenty years before. When Maria looked at “the pictures”—silhouettes taken from shadows on the wall, with numerous little deformities and disproportions incident to that method of taking likenesses—she appreciated Hester’s thoughtfulness; though she fully agreed in what Margaret said, that if Morris was willing to leave a place where she had lived so many years, for the sake of remaining with Hester and her, it was the least they could do to make her feel as much at home as possible in her new abode.Margaret’s own chamber was one of the prettiest rooms in the house, with its light green paper, its French bed and toilet at one end, and the book-case, table and writing-desk, footstool and armchair, at the other.“I shall spend many hours alone here in the bright summer mornings,” said Margaret. “Here I shall write my letters, and study, and think.”“And nod over your books, perhaps,” said Maria. “These seem comfortable arrangements for an old or infirm person; but I should be afraid they would send you to sleep. You have had little experience of being alone: do you know the strong tendency that solitary people have to napping?”Margaret laughed. She had never slept in the daytime in her life, except in illness. She could not conceive of it, in the case of a young person, full of occupation, with a hundred things to think about, and twenty books at a time that she wanted to read. She thought that regular daily solitude must be the most delightful, the most improving thing in the world. She had always envied the privilege of people who could command solitude; and now, for the first time in her life, she was going to enjoy it, and try to profit by it.“You began yesterday, I think,” said Maria. “How did you like it?”“It was no fair trial. I felt restless at having the house in my charge; and I was thinking of Hester perpetually; and then I did not know but that some of the Greys might come in at any moment: and besides, I was so busy considering whether I was making the most of the precious hours, that I really did next to nothing all day.”“But you looked sadly tired at night, Miss Margaret,” said Morris. “I never saw you more fit for bed after any party or ball.”Maria smiled. She knew something of the fatigues, as well as the pleasures, of solitude. Margaret smiled too; but she said it would be quite another thing when the family were settled, and when it should have become a habit to spend the morning hours alone; and to this Maria fully agreed.Morris thought that people’s liking or not liking to be alone depended much on their having easy or irksome thoughts in their minds. Margaret answered gaily, that in that case, she was pretty sure of liking solitude. She was made grave by a sigh and a shake of the head from Morris.“Morris, what do you mean?” said Margaret, apprehensively. “Why do you sigh and shake your head? Why should not I have easy thoughts as often as I sit in that chair?”“We never know, Miss Margaret, my dear, how things will turn out. Do you remember Miss Stevenson, that married a gentleman her family all thought a great deal of, and he turned out a swindler, and—?”The girls burst out a-laughing, and Maria assured Morris that she could answer for no accident of that kind happening with regard to Mr Hope. Morris laughed too, and said she did not mean that, but only that she never saw anybody more confident of everything going right than Miss Stevenson and all her family; and within a month after the wedding, they were in the deepest distress. That was what she meant: but there were many other ways of distress happening.“There is death, my dears,” she said. “Remember death, Miss Margaret.”“Indeed, Morris, I do,” said Margaret. “I never thought so much of death as I have done since Mr Hope’s accident, when I believed death was coming to make us all miserable; and the more I have since recoiled from it, the oftener has the thought come back.”“That is all right, my dear: all very natural. It does not seem natural to undertake any great new thing in life, without reminding one’s self of the end that must come to all our doings. However, I trust my master and mistress, and you, have many a happy year to live.”“I like those words, Morris. I like to hear you speak of your master and mistress, it has such a domestic sound! Does it not make one feel at home, Maria? Yes, Morris, there I shall sit, and feel so at ease! so at home, once more!”“But there may be other—.” Morris stopped, and changed her mood. She stepped to the closet, and opened the door, to show Miss Young the provision of shelves and pegs; and pointed out the part of the room where she had hoped there would be a sofa. She should have liked that Miss Margaret should have had a sofa to lie down on when she pleased. It seemed to her the only thing wanting. Margaret gaily declared that nothing was wanting. She had never seen a room more entirely to her taste, though she had inhabited some that were grander.By the time the little breakfast-room had been duly visited, and it had been explained that the other small parlour must necessarily be kept for a waiting-room for Mr Hope’s patients, and the young ladies had returned to the drawing-room, Maria was in full flow of sympathy with the housekeeping interests and ideas which occupied, or rather amused, her companion. Women do inevitably love housekeeping, unless educational or other impediments interfere with their natural tastes. Household management is to them the object of their talents, the subject of their interests, the vehicle of their hopes and fears, the medium through which their affections are manifested, and much of their benevolence gratified. If it be true, as has been said, that there is no good quality of a woman’s heart and mind which is not necessary to perfect housekeeping, it follows that there is no power of the mind or affection of the heart which may not be gratified in the course of its discharge. As Margaret and her guest enjoyed their pheasant, their table drawn close to the sofa and the fire, that Maria might be saved the trouble of moving, their talk was of tradespeople, of shopping at Deerbrook, and the market at Birmingham; of the kitchen and store-room, and the winter and summer arrangements of the table. The foot-boy, whom Margaret was teaching to wait, often forgot his function, and stood still to listen, and at last left the room deeply impressed with the wisdom of his instructor and her guest. When the dinner and the wine were gone, they sang, they gossiped, they quizzed. The Greys were sacred, of course; but many an anecdote came out, told honestly and with good-nature, of dear old Mrs Enderby, and her talent for being pleased; of Mrs Rowland’s transactions abroad and at home—all regulated by the principle of eclipsing the Greys; and of Mrs Howell’s and Miss Miskin’s fine sentiments, and extraordinary pieces of news. Margaret produced some of her brother-in-law’s outlines, which she had picked up and preserved—sketches of the children, in the oddest attitudes of children—of Dr Levitt, resting his book on the end of his nose, as he read in his study-chair—of Mrs Plumstead, exasperated by the arrival of an illegible letter—of almost every oddity in the place. Then out came the pencils, and the girls supplied omissions. They sketched Mr Hope himself; listening to an old woman’s theory of her own case; they sketched each other. Mr Enderby was almost the only person omitted altogether, in conversation and on paper.“Where can I have hidden my work bag?” asked Maria, after tea.“You laid it beside you, and I put it away,” said Margaret. “I wanted to see whether you could spend a whole afternoon without the feel of your thimble. You shall have it again now, for you never once asked for it between dinner and tea.”“I forgot it: but now you must give it me. I must finish my collar, or I shall not duly honour your sister in my first call. We can talk as well working as idle.”“Cannot I help you? Our affairs are all in such dreadfully perfect order, that I have not a stitch of work to do. I see a hole in your glove: let me mend it.”“Do; and when you have done that, there is the other. Two years hence, how you will wonder that there ever was a time when you had not a stitch of work in the house! Wedding clothes last about two years, and then they all wear out together. I wish you joy of the work you will have to do then—if nothing should come between you and it.”“What should come between us and it?” said Margaret, struck by the tone in which Maria spoke the last words. “Are you following Morris’s lead? Are you going to say,—‘Remember death, Miss Margaret?’”“Oh, no; but there are other things which happen sometimes besides death. I beg your pardon, Margaret, if I am impertinent—”“How should you be impertinent? You, the most intimate friend but one that I have in the world! You mean marriage of course; that I may marry within these same two years? Any one may naturally say so, I suppose, to a girl whose sister is just married: and in another person’s case it would seem to me probable enough, but I assure you, Maria, I do not feel as if it was at all likely that I should marry.”“I quite believe you, Margaret. I have no doubt you feel so, and that you will feel so till—. But, dear, you may one day find yourself feeling very differently without a moment’s warning; and that day may happen within two years. Such things have been known.”“If there was any one—” said Margaret, simply—“if I had ever seen any one for whom I could fancy myself feeling as Hester did—”“If there was any one!”—repeated Maria, looking up in some surprise. “My dear Margaret, do you mean to say there is no one?”“Yes, I do; I think so. I know what you mean, Maria. I understand your face and your voice. But I do think it is very hard that one cannot enjoy a pleasant friendship with anybody without seeing people on the watch for something more. It is so very painful to have such ideas put into one’s mind, to spoil all one’s intercourse—to throw restraint over it—to mix up selfishness with it! It is so wrong to interfere between those who might and would be the most useful and delightful companions to each other, without having a thought which need put constraint between them! Those who so interfere have a great deal to answer for. They do not know what mischief they may be doing—what pain they may be giving while they are gossiping, and making remarks to one another about what they know nothing at all about. I have no patience with such meddling!”“So I perceive, indeed,” replied Maria, somewhat amused. “But, Margaret, you have been enlarging a good deal on what I said. Not a syllable was spoken about any remarks, any observations between any people; or even about reference to any particular person. I alone must be subject to all this displeasure, and even I did not throw out a single hint about any friend of yours.”“No, you did not; that is all very true,” said Margaret, blushing: “but neither was I vexed with you;—at least, not so much as with some others. I was hasty.”“You were, indeed,” said Maria, laughing. “I never witnessed such an outburst from you before.”“And you shall not see such another; but I was answering less what you said than what I have reason to suppose is in the minds of several other people.”“In their minds? They have not told you their thoughts, then. Andseveralother people, too! Why, Margaret, I really think it is not very reasonable in you to find fault with others for thinking something which they have not troubled you to listen to, and which is so natural, that it has struck ‘several’ of them. Surely, Margaret, you must be a little, just a very little, touchy upon the matter.”“Touchy! What should make me touchy?”“Ay, what?”“I do assure you, Maria, nothing whatever has passed between that person and me which has anything more than the commonest— No, I will not say the commonest friendship, because I believe ours is a very warm and intimate friendship; but indeed it is nothing more. You may be sure that, if it had been otherwise, I should not have said a word upon the whole matter, even to you; and I would not have allowed even you to speak ten words to me about it. Are you satisfied now?”“I am satisfied that you any what you think.”“Oh, Maria! what a sigh! If you have no objection, I should like to know the meaning of that sigh.”“I was thinking of ‘the course of true love.’”“But not that it ‘never does run smooth.’ That is not true. Witness Hester’s.”“Dear Margaret, be not presumptuous! Consider how early the days of that love are yet.”“And that love in their case has only just leaped out of the fountain, and can hardly be said to have begun its course. Well! may Heaven smile on it! But tell me about that course of love which made you sigh as you did just now.”“What can I tell you about it? And yet, you shall know, if you like, how it appears to me.”“Oh, tell me! I shall see whether you would have understood Hester’s case.”“The first strange thing is, that every woman approaches this crisis of her life as unawares as if she were the first that ever loved.”“And yet all girls are brought up to think of marriage as almost the only event in life. Their minds are stuffed with thoughts of it almost before they have had time to gain any other ideas.”“Merely as means to ends low enough for their comprehension. It is not marriage—wonderful, holy, mysterious marriage—that their minds are full of, but connection with somebody or something which will give them money, and ease, and station, and independence of their parents. This has nothing to do with love. I was speaking of love—the grand influence of a woman’s life, but whose name is a mere empty sound to her till it becomes, suddenly, secretly, a voice which shakes her being to the very centre—more awful, more tremendous, than the crack of doom.”“But why? Why so tremendous?”“From the struggle which it calls upon her to endure, silently and alone;—from the agony of a change of existence which must be wrought without any eye perceiving it. Depend upon it, Margaret, there is nothing in death to compare with this change; and there can be nothing in entrance upon another state which can transcend the experience I speak of. Our powers can but be taxed to the utmost. Our being can but be strained till not another effort can be made. This is all that we can conceive to happen in death; and it happens in love, with the additional burden of fearful secrecy. One may lie down and await death, with sympathy about one to the last, though the passage hence must be solitary; and it would be a small trouble if all the world looked on to see the parting of soul and body: but that other passage into a new state, that other process of becoming a new creature, must go on in the darkness of the spirit, while the body is up and abroad, and no one must know what is passing within. The spirit’s leap from heaven to hell must be made while the smile is on the lips, and light words are upon the tongue. The struggles of shame, the pangs of despair, must be hidden in the depths of the prison-house. Every groan must be stifled before it is heard: and as for tears—they are a solace too gentle for the case. The agony is too strong for tears.”“Is this true love?” asked Margaret, in agitation.“This is true love; but not the whole of it. As for what follows—”“But is this what every woman has to undergo?”“Do you suppose that every woman knows what love really is? No; not even every unmarried woman. There are some among them, though I believe but few, who know nothing of what love is; and there are, undoubtedly, a multitude of wives who have experienced liking, preference, affection, and taken it for love; and who reach their life’s end without being aware that they have never loved. There are also, I trust, a multitude of wives who have really loved, and who have reaped the best fruits of it in regeneration of soul.”“But how dreadful is the process, if it be as you say!”“I said I had alluded to only a part of it. As for what follows, according as it is prosperous or unreturned love, heaven ensues upon this purgatory, or one may attain a middle region, somewhat dim, but serene. You wish me to be plainer?”“I wish to hear all you think—all you know. But do not let us go on with it if it makes you sigh so.”“What woman ever spoke of love without sighing?” said Maria, with a smile. “You sighed yourself, just now.”“I was thinking of Hester, I believe. How strange, if this process really awaits women—if it is a region through which their path of life must stretch—and no one gives warning, or preparation, or help!”“It is not so strange as at first sight it seems. Every mother and friend hopes that no one else has suffered as she did—that her particular charge may escape entirely, or get off more easily. Then there is the shame of confession which is involved: some conclude, at a distance of time, that they must have exaggerated their own sufferings, or have been singularly rebellious and unreasonable. Some lose the sense of the anguish in the subsequent happiness; and there are not a few who, from constitution of mind, forget altogether ‘the things that are behind.’ When you remember, too, that it is the law of nature and providence that each should bear his and her own burden, and that no warning would be of any avail, it seems no longer so strange that while girls hear endlessly of marriage, they are kept wholly in the dark about love.”“Would warning really be of no avail?”“Of no more avail than warning to a pilgrim in the middle of the desert that he will suffer from thirst, and be deluded by the mirage, before he gets into green fields again. He has no longer the choice whether to be a pilgrim in the desert or to stay at home. No one of us has the choice to be or not to be; and we must go through with our experience, under its natural conditions.”“‘To be or not to be,’” said Margaret, with a grave smile. “You remind one that the choice of suicide remains: and I almost wonder— Surely suicide has been committed from dread of lighter woes than you have described.”“I believe so: but in this case there is no dread. We find ourselves in the midst of the struggle before we are aware. And then—”“Ay, and then—”“He, who appoints the struggles of the spirit, supplies aids and supports. I fully believe that this time of conflict is that in which religion first becomes to many the reality for which they ever afterwards live. It may have been hitherto a name, a fancy, a dim abstraction, or an intermitting though bright influence: and it may yet be resorted to merely as a refuge for the spirit which can find no other. But there is a strong probability that it may now be found to be a wonderful reality; not only a potent charm in sorrow, but the life of our life. This is with many the reason why, and the mode in which, the conflict is endured to the end.”“But the beginning,” said Margaret; “what can be the beginning of this wonderful experience?”“The same with that of all the most serious of our experiences—levity, unconsciousness, confidence. Upon what subject in the world is there a greater accumulation of jokes than upon love and marriage; and upon what subject are jokes so indefatigably current? A girl laughs at her companions, and blushes or pouts for herself; as girls have done for thousands of years before her. She finds, by degrees, new, and sweet, and elevated ideas of friendship stealing their way into her mind, and she laments and wonders that the range of friendship is not wider—that its action is not freer—that girls may not enjoy intimate friendship with the companions of their brothers, as well as with their own. There is a quick and strong resentment at any one who smiles at, or speculates upon, or even observes the existence of such a friendship.”“Oh, Maria!” exclaimed Margaret, throwing down her work, and covering her face with her hands.“This goes on for a while,” proceeded Maria, as if she did not observe her companion, “this goes on for a while, smoothly, innocently, serenely. Mankind are then true and noble, the world is passing fair, and God is tender and bountiful. All evil is seen to be tending to good; all tears are meant to be wiped away; the gloom of the gloomy is faithless; virtue is easy and charming; and the vice of the vicious is unaccountable. Thus does young life glide on for a time. Then there comes a day—it is often a mystery why it should be that day of all days—when the innocent, and gay, and confident young creature finds herself in sudden trouble. The film on which she lightly trod has burst and she is in an abyss. It seems a mere trifle that plunged her there. Her friend did not come when she looked for him, or he is gone somewhere, or he has said something that she did not expect. Some such trifle reveals to her that she depends wholly upon him—that she has for long been living only for him, and on the unconscious conclusion that he has been living only for her. At the image of his dwelling anywhere but by her side, of his having any interest apart from hers, the universe is, in a moment, shrouded in gloom. Her heart is sick, and there is no rest for it, for her self-respect is gone. She has been reared in a maidenly pride, and an innocent confidence: her confidence is wholly broken-down; her pride is wounded and the agony of the wound is intolerable. We are wont to say, Margaret, that everything is endurable but a sense of guilt. If there be an exception, this is it. This wounding of the spirit ought not perhaps to be, but it is very like the sting of guilt; and a ‘wounded spirit who can bear?’”“How is it borne—so many as are the sufferers, and of a class usually thought so weak?”“That is a mistake. There is not on earth a being stronger than a woman in the concealment of her love. The soldier is called brave who cheerfully bears about the pain of a laceration to his dying day; and criminals, who, after years of struggle, unbosom themselves of their secret, give tremendous accounts of the sufferings of those years; but I question whether a woman whose existence has been burdened with an unrequited love, will not have to unfold in the next world a more harrowing tale than either of these.”“It ought not to be so.”“It ought not, where there is no guilt. But how noble is such power of self-restraint! Though the principle of society may be to cultivate our pride to excess, what fortitude grows out of it! There are no bounds to the horror, disgust, and astonishment expressed when a woman owns her love to its object unasked—even urges it upon him; but I acknowledge my surprise to be the other way—that the cases are so rare. Yet, fancying the case one’s own—”“Oh, dreadful!” cried Margaret.“No woman can endure the bare thought of the case being her own; and this proves the strong natural and educational restraint under which we all lie: but I must think that the frequent and patient endurance proves a strength of soul, a vigour of moral power, which ought to console and animate us in the depth of our abasement, if we could but recall it then when we want support and solace most.”“It can be little estimated—little understood,” said Margaret, “or it would not be sported with as it is.”“Do not let us speak of that, Margaret. You talk of my philosophy sometimes; I own that that part of the subject is too much for any philosophy I have.”“I see nothing philosophical,” said Margaret, “in making light of the deepest cruelty and treachery which is transacted under the sun. A man who trifles with such affections, and abuses such moral power, and calls his cruelty flirtation—”“Is such an one as we will not speak of now. Well! it cannot be but that good—moral and intellectual good—must issue from such exercise and discipline as this; and such good does issue often, perhaps generally. There are sad tales sung and told everywhere of brains crazed, and graves dug by hopeless love: and I fear that many more sink down into disease and death from this cause, than are at all suspected to be its victims: but not a few find themselves lifted up from their abyss, and set free from their bondage of pride and humiliation. They marry their loves and stand amazed at their own bliss, and are truly the happiest people upon earth, and in the broad road to be the wisest. In my belief, the happiest are ever so.”“Bless you for that, for Hester’s sake! And what of those who are not thus released?”“They get out of the abyss too; but they have to struggle out alone. Their condition must depend much on what they were before the conflict befell them. Some are soured, and live restlessly. Some are weak, and come out worldly, and sacrifice themselves, in marriage or otherwise, for low objects. Some strive to forget, and to become as like as possible to what they were before; and of this order are many of the women whom we meet, whose minds are in a state of perpetual and incurable infancy. It is difficult to see the purpose of their suffering, from any effects it appears to have produced: but then there is the hope that their griefs were not of the deepest.”“And what of those whose griefs are of the deepest?”“They rise the highest above them. Some of these must be content with having learned more or less of what life is, and of what it is for, and with reconciling themselves to its objects and conditions.”“In short, with being philosophical,” said Margaret, with an inquiring and affectionate glance at her friend.“With being philosophical,” Maria smilingly agreed. “Others, of a happier nature, to whom philosophy and religion come as one, and are welcomed by energies not wholly destroyed, and affections not altogether crushed, are strong in the new strength which they have found, with hearts as wide as the universe, and spirits the gayest of the gay.”“You never told me anything of all this before,” said Margaret; “yet it is plain that you must have thought much about it—that it must have been long in your mind.”“It has; and I tell it to you, that you may share what I have learned, instead of going without the knowledge, or, alas! gathering it up for yourself.”“Oh, then, it is so—it is from your own—”“It is from my own experience that I speak,” said Maria, without looking up. “And now, there is some one in the world who knows it beside myself.”“I hope you do not—I hope you never will repent having told me,” said Margaret, rising and taking her seat on the sofa, beside her friend.“I do not, and I shall not repent,” said Maria. “You are faithful: and it will be a relief to me to have sympathy—to be able to speak sometimes, instead of having to deny and repress my whole heart and soul. But I can tell you no more—not one word.”“Do not. Only show me how I can comfort—how I can gratify you.”“I need no special comfort now,” said Maria, smiling. “Ihavesometimes grievously wanted a friend to love and speak with—and if I could, to serve. Now I have a friend.” And the look with which she gazed at her companion brought the tears into Margaret’s eyes.“Come, let us speak of something else,” said Maria, cheerfully. “When do you expect your friend, Mr Enderby, at Deerbrook again?”“His sister says nobody knows; and I do not think he can tell himself. You know he does not live at Deerbrook.”“I am aware of that; but his last visit was such a long one—”“Six days,” said Margaret, laughing.“Ah! I did not mean his last week’s appearance, or any of his pop visits. I was thinking of his summer visitation. It was so long, that some people began to look upon him as a resident.”“If his mother does not grow much better soon, we shall see him again,” said Margaret. “It is always her illness that brings him.—Do you not believe me, Maria?”“I believe, as before, that you say what you think. Whether you are mistaken is another question, which I cannot pretend to answer.”“I hope, Maria, that as you have placed so much confidence in me, you will not stop short at the very point which is of the greatest importance to me.”“I will not, dear. What I think on the subject of Mr Enderby, in relation to you, is, that some of your friends believe that you are the cause of his stay having been so long in the summer, and of his coming so often since. I know no more than this. How should I?”“Then I will tell you something more, that I might as well have mentioned before. When Mrs Rowland had an idea that Mr Enderby might think of Hester, she told Hester—that miserable day in Dingleford woods—that his family expected he would soon marry a young lady of family and fortune, who was a great favourite with all his connections.”“Who may this young lady be?”“Oh, she did not say; some one too high for our acquaintance, if we are to believe what Mrs Rowland declared.”“And do you believe it?”“Why—. Do you?”“I dare say Mrs Rowland may believe it herself; but she may be mistaken.”“That is exactly what Hester said,” observed Margaret, eagerly. “And that was more than five months ago, and we have not heard a syllable of the matter since.”“And so intimate a friendship as yours and Mr Enderby’s is,” said Maria, smiling,—“it is scarcely probable that his mind should be full of such an affair, and that he should be able to conceal it so perfectly from you.”“I am glad you think so,” said Margaret, ingenuously. “You cannot imagine how strange it is to see Mrs Grey and others taking for granted that he is free, when Hester and I could tell them in a moment what Mrs Rowland said. But if you think Mrs Rowland is all wrong, what do you really suppose about his coming so much to Deerbrook?”“I have little doubt that those friends of yours—Mrs Grey and the others—are right. But—.”“But what?”“Just this. If I might warn you by myself; I would caution you, not only against dwelling much upon such a fact, but against interpreting it to mean more than it possibly may. This is my reason for speaking to you upon the matter at all. I do it because you will be pretty sure to hear how the fact itself is viewed by others, while no one else would be likely to give you the caution. Mr Enderbymaycome, as you suppose, entirely to see his mother. He may come to see you: but, supposing he does, if he is like other men, he may not know his own mind yet: and, there is another possible thing—a thing which is possible, Margaret, though he is such a dear and intimate friend—that he may not know yours—all its strength of affection, all its fidelity, all its trust and power of self-control.”“Oh, stop; pray stop,” said Margaret. “You frighten me with the thoughts of all you have been saying this evening, though I could so entirely satisfy you as to what our intercourse has been—though I know Mr Enderby so much better than you do. You need warn me no more. I will think of what you have said, if I find myself doubting whether he comes to see his mother—if I find myself listening to what others may suppose about his reasons. Indeed, I will remember what you have said.”“Then I am glad I ventured to say it, particularly as you are not angry with me this time.”“I am not at all angry: how could I be so? But I do not agree with you about the fact.”“I know it, and I may be mistaken.”“Now tell me,” said Margaret, “what you suppose Morris meant when she said what you heard about the pleasure of solitude depending on one’s thoughts being happy or otherwise. I know it is a common old idea enough; but Morris does not know that; and I am sure she had some particular instance in view. Morris does not make general propositions, except with a particular case in her mind’s eye; and she is a wise woman; and we think her sayings are weighty.”“It struck me that she had a real probability in her mind; but I did not think it related to Mr Enderby, or to anything so exclusively your own concern.”“No; I hope not: but what then?”“I think that Morris knows more of life and the world than you, and that she does not anticipate quite so much happiness from Hester’s marriage as you do. Do not be distressed or alarmed. She means no mistrust of anybody, I imagine; but only that there is no perfect happiness in this life, that nobody is faultless; and no home, not even where her young ladies live, is quite free from care and trouble. It would not hurt you, surely, if she was to say this outright to you?”“Oh, no; nor a good deal more of the same tendency. She might come much nearer to the point, good soul! without hurting me. Suppose I ask her what it was she did mean, to-night or to-morrow, when she and I are alone?”“Well! if she is such a wise woman—. But I doubt whether you could get her nearer to the point without danger of hurting her. Can she bring herself to own that either of you have faults?”“Oh, yes: she has never spared us, from the time we were two feet high.”“What can make you so anxious as to what she meant?”“I really hardly know, unless it be that where one loves very much, one fears—Oh, so faithlessly! I know I ought to fear less for Hester than ever; and yet—.”The door burst open, and the foot-boy entered with his jingling tray, and news that the sedan for Miss Young was at the door. What sedan? Margaret had asked Mrs Grey for hers, as the snow had fallen heavily, and the streets were not fit for Maria’s walking. Maria was very thankful.Here was an end of Maria’s bright holiday. Mr Grey’s porters must not be kept waiting. The friends assured each other that they should never forget this day. It was little likely that they should.

Mr Hope’s professional duties would not permit him to be long absent, even on such an occasion as his wedding journey. The young couple went only to Oxford, and were to return in a week. Margaret thought that this week never would be over. It was not only that she longed for rest in a home once more, and was eager to repose upon her new privilege of having a brother: she was also anxious about Hester,—anxious to be convinced, by the observation of the eye and the hearing of the ear, that her sister was enjoying that peace of spirit which reason seemed to declare must be hers. It would be difficult to determine how much Margaret’s attachment to her sister was deepened and strengthened by the incessant solicitude she had felt for her, ever since this attachment had grown out of the companionship of their childhood. She could scarcely remember the time when she had not been in a state of either hope or fear for Hester;—hope that, in some new circumstances, she would be happy at last; or dread lest these new circumstances should fail, as all preceding influences had failed. If Hester had been less candid and less generous than she was, her sister’s affection might have given way under the repeated trials and disappointments it had had to sustain; and there were times when Margaret’s patiencehadgiven way, and she had for a brief while wished, and almost resolved, that she could and would regard with indifference the state of mind of one who was not reasonable, and who seemed incapable of being contented. But such resolutions of indifference dissolved before her sister’s next manifestations of generosity, or appeals to the forgiveness of those about her. Margaret always ended by supposing herself the cause of the evil; that she had been inconsiderate; that she could not allow sufficiently for a sensitiveness greater than her own; and above all, that she was not fully worthy of such affection as Hester’s—not sufficient for such a mind and heart. She had looked forward, with ardent expectation when she was happiest, and with sickly dread when she was depressed, to the event of Hester’s marriage, as that which must decide whether she could be happy, or whether her life was to be throughout the scene of conflict that its opening years had been. Hester’s connexion was all that she could have desired, and far beyond her utmost hopes. This brother-in-law was one of a thousand—one whom she was ready to consider a good angel sent to shed peace over her sister’s life: and during the months of her engagement, she had kept anxiety at bay, and resigned herself to the delights of gratitude and of sweet anticipations, and to the satisfaction of feeling that her own responsibilities might be considered at an end. She had delivered Hester’s happiness over into the charge of one who would cherish it better and more successfully than she had done; and she could not but feel the relief of the freedom she had gained: but neither could she repress her anxiety to know, at the outset, whether all was indeed as well as she had till now undoubtingly supposed that it would be.

Margaret’s attachment to her sister would have been in greater danger of being worn out but for the existence of a closer sympathy between them than any one but themselves, and perhaps Morris, was aware of. Margaret had a strong suspicion that in Hester’s place her temper would have been exactly what Hester’s was in its least happy characteristics. She had tendencies to jealousy; and if not to morbid self-study, and to dissatisfaction with present circumstances, she was indebted for this, she knew, to her being occupied with her sister, and yet more to the perpetual warning held up before her eyes. This conviction generated no sense of superiority in Margaret—interfered in no degree with the reverence she entertained for Hester, a reverence rather enhanced than impaired by the tender compassion with which she regarded her mental conflicts and sufferings. Every movement of irritability in herself (and she was conscious of many) alarmed and humbled her, but, at the same time, enabled her better to make allowance for her sister; and every harsh word and unreasonable mood of Hester’s, by restoring her to her self-command and stimulating her magnanimity, made her sensible that she owed much of her power over herself to that circumstance which kept the necessity of it perpetually before her mind. For the same reason that men hate those whom they have injured, Margaret loved with unusual fervour the sister with whom she had to forbear. For the same reason that the children, even the affectionate children, of tyrannical or lax parents, love liberty and conscientiousness above all else, Margaret was in practice gentle, long-suffering, and forgetful of self. For the same reason that the afflicted are looked upon by the pure-minded as sacred, Margaret regarded her sister with a reverence which preserved her patience from being spent, and her attachment from wasting away.

The first letter from her brother and sister had been opened in great internal agitation. All was well, however. It was certain that all was well; for, while Hester said not one word about being happy, she was full of thought for others. She knew that Margaret meant to take possession of the corner-house, to “go home,” a few days before the arrival of the travellers, in order to make all comfortable for them. Hester begged that she would take care to be well amused during these few days. Perhaps she might induce Maria Young to waive the ceremony of being first invited by the real housekeepers, and to spend as much time as she could with her friend. “Give my kind regards to Maria,” said the letter, “and tell her I like to fancy you two passing a long evening by that fireside where we all hope we shall often have the pleasure of seeing her.” Six months ago Hester would not have spoken so freely and so kindly of Maria: she would not have so sanctioned Margaret’s intimacy with her. All was right, and Margaret was happy.

Maria came, and, thanks to the holiday spirit of a wedding week, for a long day. Delicious are the pleasures of those whose appetite for them is whetted by abstinence. Charming, wholly charming, was this day to Maria, spent in quiet, free from the children, free from the observation of other guests, passed in all external luxury, and in sister-like confidence with the friend to whom she had owed some of the best pleasures of the last year. Margaret was no less happy in indulging her, and in opening much more of her heart to her than she could to any one else since Hester married—which now, at the end of six days, seemed a long time ago.

Miss Young came early, that she might see the house, and everything in it, before dark; and the days were now at their shortest. She did not mind the fatigue of mounting to the very top of the house. She must see the view from the window of Morris’s attic. Yesterday’s fall of snow had made the meadows one sheet of white; and the river looked black, and the woods somewhat frowning and dismal; but those who knew the place so well could imagine what all this must be in summer; and Morris was assured that her room was the pleasantest in the house. Morris curtseyed and smiled, and did not say how cold and dreary a wide landscape appeared to her, and how much better she should have liked to look out upon a street, if only Mr Hope had happened to have been settled in Birmingham. She pointed out to Maria how good Miss Hester had been, in thinking about the furnishing of this attic. She had taken the trouble to have the pictures of Morris’s father and mother, which had always hung opposite her bed at Birmingham, brought hither, and fixed up in the same place. The bed-hangings had come, too; so that, except for its being so much lighter, and the prospect from the window so different, it was almost like the same room she had slept in for three-and-twenty years before. When Maria looked at “the pictures”—silhouettes taken from shadows on the wall, with numerous little deformities and disproportions incident to that method of taking likenesses—she appreciated Hester’s thoughtfulness; though she fully agreed in what Margaret said, that if Morris was willing to leave a place where she had lived so many years, for the sake of remaining with Hester and her, it was the least they could do to make her feel as much at home as possible in her new abode.

Margaret’s own chamber was one of the prettiest rooms in the house, with its light green paper, its French bed and toilet at one end, and the book-case, table and writing-desk, footstool and armchair, at the other.

“I shall spend many hours alone here in the bright summer mornings,” said Margaret. “Here I shall write my letters, and study, and think.”

“And nod over your books, perhaps,” said Maria. “These seem comfortable arrangements for an old or infirm person; but I should be afraid they would send you to sleep. You have had little experience of being alone: do you know the strong tendency that solitary people have to napping?”

Margaret laughed. She had never slept in the daytime in her life, except in illness. She could not conceive of it, in the case of a young person, full of occupation, with a hundred things to think about, and twenty books at a time that she wanted to read. She thought that regular daily solitude must be the most delightful, the most improving thing in the world. She had always envied the privilege of people who could command solitude; and now, for the first time in her life, she was going to enjoy it, and try to profit by it.

“You began yesterday, I think,” said Maria. “How did you like it?”

“It was no fair trial. I felt restless at having the house in my charge; and I was thinking of Hester perpetually; and then I did not know but that some of the Greys might come in at any moment: and besides, I was so busy considering whether I was making the most of the precious hours, that I really did next to nothing all day.”

“But you looked sadly tired at night, Miss Margaret,” said Morris. “I never saw you more fit for bed after any party or ball.”

Maria smiled. She knew something of the fatigues, as well as the pleasures, of solitude. Margaret smiled too; but she said it would be quite another thing when the family were settled, and when it should have become a habit to spend the morning hours alone; and to this Maria fully agreed.

Morris thought that people’s liking or not liking to be alone depended much on their having easy or irksome thoughts in their minds. Margaret answered gaily, that in that case, she was pretty sure of liking solitude. She was made grave by a sigh and a shake of the head from Morris.

“Morris, what do you mean?” said Margaret, apprehensively. “Why do you sigh and shake your head? Why should not I have easy thoughts as often as I sit in that chair?”

“We never know, Miss Margaret, my dear, how things will turn out. Do you remember Miss Stevenson, that married a gentleman her family all thought a great deal of, and he turned out a swindler, and—?”

The girls burst out a-laughing, and Maria assured Morris that she could answer for no accident of that kind happening with regard to Mr Hope. Morris laughed too, and said she did not mean that, but only that she never saw anybody more confident of everything going right than Miss Stevenson and all her family; and within a month after the wedding, they were in the deepest distress. That was what she meant: but there were many other ways of distress happening.

“There is death, my dears,” she said. “Remember death, Miss Margaret.”

“Indeed, Morris, I do,” said Margaret. “I never thought so much of death as I have done since Mr Hope’s accident, when I believed death was coming to make us all miserable; and the more I have since recoiled from it, the oftener has the thought come back.”

“That is all right, my dear: all very natural. It does not seem natural to undertake any great new thing in life, without reminding one’s self of the end that must come to all our doings. However, I trust my master and mistress, and you, have many a happy year to live.”

“I like those words, Morris. I like to hear you speak of your master and mistress, it has such a domestic sound! Does it not make one feel at home, Maria? Yes, Morris, there I shall sit, and feel so at ease! so at home, once more!”

“But there may be other—.” Morris stopped, and changed her mood. She stepped to the closet, and opened the door, to show Miss Young the provision of shelves and pegs; and pointed out the part of the room where she had hoped there would be a sofa. She should have liked that Miss Margaret should have had a sofa to lie down on when she pleased. It seemed to her the only thing wanting. Margaret gaily declared that nothing was wanting. She had never seen a room more entirely to her taste, though she had inhabited some that were grander.

By the time the little breakfast-room had been duly visited, and it had been explained that the other small parlour must necessarily be kept for a waiting-room for Mr Hope’s patients, and the young ladies had returned to the drawing-room, Maria was in full flow of sympathy with the housekeeping interests and ideas which occupied, or rather amused, her companion. Women do inevitably love housekeeping, unless educational or other impediments interfere with their natural tastes. Household management is to them the object of their talents, the subject of their interests, the vehicle of their hopes and fears, the medium through which their affections are manifested, and much of their benevolence gratified. If it be true, as has been said, that there is no good quality of a woman’s heart and mind which is not necessary to perfect housekeeping, it follows that there is no power of the mind or affection of the heart which may not be gratified in the course of its discharge. As Margaret and her guest enjoyed their pheasant, their table drawn close to the sofa and the fire, that Maria might be saved the trouble of moving, their talk was of tradespeople, of shopping at Deerbrook, and the market at Birmingham; of the kitchen and store-room, and the winter and summer arrangements of the table. The foot-boy, whom Margaret was teaching to wait, often forgot his function, and stood still to listen, and at last left the room deeply impressed with the wisdom of his instructor and her guest. When the dinner and the wine were gone, they sang, they gossiped, they quizzed. The Greys were sacred, of course; but many an anecdote came out, told honestly and with good-nature, of dear old Mrs Enderby, and her talent for being pleased; of Mrs Rowland’s transactions abroad and at home—all regulated by the principle of eclipsing the Greys; and of Mrs Howell’s and Miss Miskin’s fine sentiments, and extraordinary pieces of news. Margaret produced some of her brother-in-law’s outlines, which she had picked up and preserved—sketches of the children, in the oddest attitudes of children—of Dr Levitt, resting his book on the end of his nose, as he read in his study-chair—of Mrs Plumstead, exasperated by the arrival of an illegible letter—of almost every oddity in the place. Then out came the pencils, and the girls supplied omissions. They sketched Mr Hope himself; listening to an old woman’s theory of her own case; they sketched each other. Mr Enderby was almost the only person omitted altogether, in conversation and on paper.

“Where can I have hidden my work bag?” asked Maria, after tea.

“You laid it beside you, and I put it away,” said Margaret. “I wanted to see whether you could spend a whole afternoon without the feel of your thimble. You shall have it again now, for you never once asked for it between dinner and tea.”

“I forgot it: but now you must give it me. I must finish my collar, or I shall not duly honour your sister in my first call. We can talk as well working as idle.”

“Cannot I help you? Our affairs are all in such dreadfully perfect order, that I have not a stitch of work to do. I see a hole in your glove: let me mend it.”

“Do; and when you have done that, there is the other. Two years hence, how you will wonder that there ever was a time when you had not a stitch of work in the house! Wedding clothes last about two years, and then they all wear out together. I wish you joy of the work you will have to do then—if nothing should come between you and it.”

“What should come between us and it?” said Margaret, struck by the tone in which Maria spoke the last words. “Are you following Morris’s lead? Are you going to say,—‘Remember death, Miss Margaret?’”

“Oh, no; but there are other things which happen sometimes besides death. I beg your pardon, Margaret, if I am impertinent—”

“How should you be impertinent? You, the most intimate friend but one that I have in the world! You mean marriage of course; that I may marry within these same two years? Any one may naturally say so, I suppose, to a girl whose sister is just married: and in another person’s case it would seem to me probable enough, but I assure you, Maria, I do not feel as if it was at all likely that I should marry.”

“I quite believe you, Margaret. I have no doubt you feel so, and that you will feel so till—. But, dear, you may one day find yourself feeling very differently without a moment’s warning; and that day may happen within two years. Such things have been known.”

“If there was any one—” said Margaret, simply—“if I had ever seen any one for whom I could fancy myself feeling as Hester did—”

“If there was any one!”—repeated Maria, looking up in some surprise. “My dear Margaret, do you mean to say there is no one?”

“Yes, I do; I think so. I know what you mean, Maria. I understand your face and your voice. But I do think it is very hard that one cannot enjoy a pleasant friendship with anybody without seeing people on the watch for something more. It is so very painful to have such ideas put into one’s mind, to spoil all one’s intercourse—to throw restraint over it—to mix up selfishness with it! It is so wrong to interfere between those who might and would be the most useful and delightful companions to each other, without having a thought which need put constraint between them! Those who so interfere have a great deal to answer for. They do not know what mischief they may be doing—what pain they may be giving while they are gossiping, and making remarks to one another about what they know nothing at all about. I have no patience with such meddling!”

“So I perceive, indeed,” replied Maria, somewhat amused. “But, Margaret, you have been enlarging a good deal on what I said. Not a syllable was spoken about any remarks, any observations between any people; or even about reference to any particular person. I alone must be subject to all this displeasure, and even I did not throw out a single hint about any friend of yours.”

“No, you did not; that is all very true,” said Margaret, blushing: “but neither was I vexed with you;—at least, not so much as with some others. I was hasty.”

“You were, indeed,” said Maria, laughing. “I never witnessed such an outburst from you before.”

“And you shall not see such another; but I was answering less what you said than what I have reason to suppose is in the minds of several other people.”

“In their minds? They have not told you their thoughts, then. Andseveralother people, too! Why, Margaret, I really think it is not very reasonable in you to find fault with others for thinking something which they have not troubled you to listen to, and which is so natural, that it has struck ‘several’ of them. Surely, Margaret, you must be a little, just a very little, touchy upon the matter.”

“Touchy! What should make me touchy?”

“Ay, what?”

“I do assure you, Maria, nothing whatever has passed between that person and me which has anything more than the commonest— No, I will not say the commonest friendship, because I believe ours is a very warm and intimate friendship; but indeed it is nothing more. You may be sure that, if it had been otherwise, I should not have said a word upon the whole matter, even to you; and I would not have allowed even you to speak ten words to me about it. Are you satisfied now?”

“I am satisfied that you any what you think.”

“Oh, Maria! what a sigh! If you have no objection, I should like to know the meaning of that sigh.”

“I was thinking of ‘the course of true love.’”

“But not that it ‘never does run smooth.’ That is not true. Witness Hester’s.”

“Dear Margaret, be not presumptuous! Consider how early the days of that love are yet.”

“And that love in their case has only just leaped out of the fountain, and can hardly be said to have begun its course. Well! may Heaven smile on it! But tell me about that course of love which made you sigh as you did just now.”

“What can I tell you about it? And yet, you shall know, if you like, how it appears to me.”

“Oh, tell me! I shall see whether you would have understood Hester’s case.”

“The first strange thing is, that every woman approaches this crisis of her life as unawares as if she were the first that ever loved.”

“And yet all girls are brought up to think of marriage as almost the only event in life. Their minds are stuffed with thoughts of it almost before they have had time to gain any other ideas.”

“Merely as means to ends low enough for their comprehension. It is not marriage—wonderful, holy, mysterious marriage—that their minds are full of, but connection with somebody or something which will give them money, and ease, and station, and independence of their parents. This has nothing to do with love. I was speaking of love—the grand influence of a woman’s life, but whose name is a mere empty sound to her till it becomes, suddenly, secretly, a voice which shakes her being to the very centre—more awful, more tremendous, than the crack of doom.”

“But why? Why so tremendous?”

“From the struggle which it calls upon her to endure, silently and alone;—from the agony of a change of existence which must be wrought without any eye perceiving it. Depend upon it, Margaret, there is nothing in death to compare with this change; and there can be nothing in entrance upon another state which can transcend the experience I speak of. Our powers can but be taxed to the utmost. Our being can but be strained till not another effort can be made. This is all that we can conceive to happen in death; and it happens in love, with the additional burden of fearful secrecy. One may lie down and await death, with sympathy about one to the last, though the passage hence must be solitary; and it would be a small trouble if all the world looked on to see the parting of soul and body: but that other passage into a new state, that other process of becoming a new creature, must go on in the darkness of the spirit, while the body is up and abroad, and no one must know what is passing within. The spirit’s leap from heaven to hell must be made while the smile is on the lips, and light words are upon the tongue. The struggles of shame, the pangs of despair, must be hidden in the depths of the prison-house. Every groan must be stifled before it is heard: and as for tears—they are a solace too gentle for the case. The agony is too strong for tears.”

“Is this true love?” asked Margaret, in agitation.

“This is true love; but not the whole of it. As for what follows—”

“But is this what every woman has to undergo?”

“Do you suppose that every woman knows what love really is? No; not even every unmarried woman. There are some among them, though I believe but few, who know nothing of what love is; and there are, undoubtedly, a multitude of wives who have experienced liking, preference, affection, and taken it for love; and who reach their life’s end without being aware that they have never loved. There are also, I trust, a multitude of wives who have really loved, and who have reaped the best fruits of it in regeneration of soul.”

“But how dreadful is the process, if it be as you say!”

“I said I had alluded to only a part of it. As for what follows, according as it is prosperous or unreturned love, heaven ensues upon this purgatory, or one may attain a middle region, somewhat dim, but serene. You wish me to be plainer?”

“I wish to hear all you think—all you know. But do not let us go on with it if it makes you sigh so.”

“What woman ever spoke of love without sighing?” said Maria, with a smile. “You sighed yourself, just now.”

“I was thinking of Hester, I believe. How strange, if this process really awaits women—if it is a region through which their path of life must stretch—and no one gives warning, or preparation, or help!”

“It is not so strange as at first sight it seems. Every mother and friend hopes that no one else has suffered as she did—that her particular charge may escape entirely, or get off more easily. Then there is the shame of confession which is involved: some conclude, at a distance of time, that they must have exaggerated their own sufferings, or have been singularly rebellious and unreasonable. Some lose the sense of the anguish in the subsequent happiness; and there are not a few who, from constitution of mind, forget altogether ‘the things that are behind.’ When you remember, too, that it is the law of nature and providence that each should bear his and her own burden, and that no warning would be of any avail, it seems no longer so strange that while girls hear endlessly of marriage, they are kept wholly in the dark about love.”

“Would warning really be of no avail?”

“Of no more avail than warning to a pilgrim in the middle of the desert that he will suffer from thirst, and be deluded by the mirage, before he gets into green fields again. He has no longer the choice whether to be a pilgrim in the desert or to stay at home. No one of us has the choice to be or not to be; and we must go through with our experience, under its natural conditions.”

“‘To be or not to be,’” said Margaret, with a grave smile. “You remind one that the choice of suicide remains: and I almost wonder— Surely suicide has been committed from dread of lighter woes than you have described.”

“I believe so: but in this case there is no dread. We find ourselves in the midst of the struggle before we are aware. And then—”

“Ay, and then—”

“He, who appoints the struggles of the spirit, supplies aids and supports. I fully believe that this time of conflict is that in which religion first becomes to many the reality for which they ever afterwards live. It may have been hitherto a name, a fancy, a dim abstraction, or an intermitting though bright influence: and it may yet be resorted to merely as a refuge for the spirit which can find no other. But there is a strong probability that it may now be found to be a wonderful reality; not only a potent charm in sorrow, but the life of our life. This is with many the reason why, and the mode in which, the conflict is endured to the end.”

“But the beginning,” said Margaret; “what can be the beginning of this wonderful experience?”

“The same with that of all the most serious of our experiences—levity, unconsciousness, confidence. Upon what subject in the world is there a greater accumulation of jokes than upon love and marriage; and upon what subject are jokes so indefatigably current? A girl laughs at her companions, and blushes or pouts for herself; as girls have done for thousands of years before her. She finds, by degrees, new, and sweet, and elevated ideas of friendship stealing their way into her mind, and she laments and wonders that the range of friendship is not wider—that its action is not freer—that girls may not enjoy intimate friendship with the companions of their brothers, as well as with their own. There is a quick and strong resentment at any one who smiles at, or speculates upon, or even observes the existence of such a friendship.”

“Oh, Maria!” exclaimed Margaret, throwing down her work, and covering her face with her hands.

“This goes on for a while,” proceeded Maria, as if she did not observe her companion, “this goes on for a while, smoothly, innocently, serenely. Mankind are then true and noble, the world is passing fair, and God is tender and bountiful. All evil is seen to be tending to good; all tears are meant to be wiped away; the gloom of the gloomy is faithless; virtue is easy and charming; and the vice of the vicious is unaccountable. Thus does young life glide on for a time. Then there comes a day—it is often a mystery why it should be that day of all days—when the innocent, and gay, and confident young creature finds herself in sudden trouble. The film on which she lightly trod has burst and she is in an abyss. It seems a mere trifle that plunged her there. Her friend did not come when she looked for him, or he is gone somewhere, or he has said something that she did not expect. Some such trifle reveals to her that she depends wholly upon him—that she has for long been living only for him, and on the unconscious conclusion that he has been living only for her. At the image of his dwelling anywhere but by her side, of his having any interest apart from hers, the universe is, in a moment, shrouded in gloom. Her heart is sick, and there is no rest for it, for her self-respect is gone. She has been reared in a maidenly pride, and an innocent confidence: her confidence is wholly broken-down; her pride is wounded and the agony of the wound is intolerable. We are wont to say, Margaret, that everything is endurable but a sense of guilt. If there be an exception, this is it. This wounding of the spirit ought not perhaps to be, but it is very like the sting of guilt; and a ‘wounded spirit who can bear?’”

“How is it borne—so many as are the sufferers, and of a class usually thought so weak?”

“That is a mistake. There is not on earth a being stronger than a woman in the concealment of her love. The soldier is called brave who cheerfully bears about the pain of a laceration to his dying day; and criminals, who, after years of struggle, unbosom themselves of their secret, give tremendous accounts of the sufferings of those years; but I question whether a woman whose existence has been burdened with an unrequited love, will not have to unfold in the next world a more harrowing tale than either of these.”

“It ought not to be so.”

“It ought not, where there is no guilt. But how noble is such power of self-restraint! Though the principle of society may be to cultivate our pride to excess, what fortitude grows out of it! There are no bounds to the horror, disgust, and astonishment expressed when a woman owns her love to its object unasked—even urges it upon him; but I acknowledge my surprise to be the other way—that the cases are so rare. Yet, fancying the case one’s own—”

“Oh, dreadful!” cried Margaret.

“No woman can endure the bare thought of the case being her own; and this proves the strong natural and educational restraint under which we all lie: but I must think that the frequent and patient endurance proves a strength of soul, a vigour of moral power, which ought to console and animate us in the depth of our abasement, if we could but recall it then when we want support and solace most.”

“It can be little estimated—little understood,” said Margaret, “or it would not be sported with as it is.”

“Do not let us speak of that, Margaret. You talk of my philosophy sometimes; I own that that part of the subject is too much for any philosophy I have.”

“I see nothing philosophical,” said Margaret, “in making light of the deepest cruelty and treachery which is transacted under the sun. A man who trifles with such affections, and abuses such moral power, and calls his cruelty flirtation—”

“Is such an one as we will not speak of now. Well! it cannot be but that good—moral and intellectual good—must issue from such exercise and discipline as this; and such good does issue often, perhaps generally. There are sad tales sung and told everywhere of brains crazed, and graves dug by hopeless love: and I fear that many more sink down into disease and death from this cause, than are at all suspected to be its victims: but not a few find themselves lifted up from their abyss, and set free from their bondage of pride and humiliation. They marry their loves and stand amazed at their own bliss, and are truly the happiest people upon earth, and in the broad road to be the wisest. In my belief, the happiest are ever so.”

“Bless you for that, for Hester’s sake! And what of those who are not thus released?”

“They get out of the abyss too; but they have to struggle out alone. Their condition must depend much on what they were before the conflict befell them. Some are soured, and live restlessly. Some are weak, and come out worldly, and sacrifice themselves, in marriage or otherwise, for low objects. Some strive to forget, and to become as like as possible to what they were before; and of this order are many of the women whom we meet, whose minds are in a state of perpetual and incurable infancy. It is difficult to see the purpose of their suffering, from any effects it appears to have produced: but then there is the hope that their griefs were not of the deepest.”

“And what of those whose griefs are of the deepest?”

“They rise the highest above them. Some of these must be content with having learned more or less of what life is, and of what it is for, and with reconciling themselves to its objects and conditions.”

“In short, with being philosophical,” said Margaret, with an inquiring and affectionate glance at her friend.

“With being philosophical,” Maria smilingly agreed. “Others, of a happier nature, to whom philosophy and religion come as one, and are welcomed by energies not wholly destroyed, and affections not altogether crushed, are strong in the new strength which they have found, with hearts as wide as the universe, and spirits the gayest of the gay.”

“You never told me anything of all this before,” said Margaret; “yet it is plain that you must have thought much about it—that it must have been long in your mind.”

“It has; and I tell it to you, that you may share what I have learned, instead of going without the knowledge, or, alas! gathering it up for yourself.”

“Oh, then, it is so—it is from your own—”

“It is from my own experience that I speak,” said Maria, without looking up. “And now, there is some one in the world who knows it beside myself.”

“I hope you do not—I hope you never will repent having told me,” said Margaret, rising and taking her seat on the sofa, beside her friend.

“I do not, and I shall not repent,” said Maria. “You are faithful: and it will be a relief to me to have sympathy—to be able to speak sometimes, instead of having to deny and repress my whole heart and soul. But I can tell you no more—not one word.”

“Do not. Only show me how I can comfort—how I can gratify you.”

“I need no special comfort now,” said Maria, smiling. “Ihavesometimes grievously wanted a friend to love and speak with—and if I could, to serve. Now I have a friend.” And the look with which she gazed at her companion brought the tears into Margaret’s eyes.

“Come, let us speak of something else,” said Maria, cheerfully. “When do you expect your friend, Mr Enderby, at Deerbrook again?”

“His sister says nobody knows; and I do not think he can tell himself. You know he does not live at Deerbrook.”

“I am aware of that; but his last visit was such a long one—”

“Six days,” said Margaret, laughing.

“Ah! I did not mean his last week’s appearance, or any of his pop visits. I was thinking of his summer visitation. It was so long, that some people began to look upon him as a resident.”

“If his mother does not grow much better soon, we shall see him again,” said Margaret. “It is always her illness that brings him.—Do you not believe me, Maria?”

“I believe, as before, that you say what you think. Whether you are mistaken is another question, which I cannot pretend to answer.”

“I hope, Maria, that as you have placed so much confidence in me, you will not stop short at the very point which is of the greatest importance to me.”

“I will not, dear. What I think on the subject of Mr Enderby, in relation to you, is, that some of your friends believe that you are the cause of his stay having been so long in the summer, and of his coming so often since. I know no more than this. How should I?”

“Then I will tell you something more, that I might as well have mentioned before. When Mrs Rowland had an idea that Mr Enderby might think of Hester, she told Hester—that miserable day in Dingleford woods—that his family expected he would soon marry a young lady of family and fortune, who was a great favourite with all his connections.”

“Who may this young lady be?”

“Oh, she did not say; some one too high for our acquaintance, if we are to believe what Mrs Rowland declared.”

“And do you believe it?”

“Why—. Do you?”

“I dare say Mrs Rowland may believe it herself; but she may be mistaken.”

“That is exactly what Hester said,” observed Margaret, eagerly. “And that was more than five months ago, and we have not heard a syllable of the matter since.”

“And so intimate a friendship as yours and Mr Enderby’s is,” said Maria, smiling,—“it is scarcely probable that his mind should be full of such an affair, and that he should be able to conceal it so perfectly from you.”

“I am glad you think so,” said Margaret, ingenuously. “You cannot imagine how strange it is to see Mrs Grey and others taking for granted that he is free, when Hester and I could tell them in a moment what Mrs Rowland said. But if you think Mrs Rowland is all wrong, what do you really suppose about his coming so much to Deerbrook?”

“I have little doubt that those friends of yours—Mrs Grey and the others—are right. But—.”

“But what?”

“Just this. If I might warn you by myself; I would caution you, not only against dwelling much upon such a fact, but against interpreting it to mean more than it possibly may. This is my reason for speaking to you upon the matter at all. I do it because you will be pretty sure to hear how the fact itself is viewed by others, while no one else would be likely to give you the caution. Mr Enderbymaycome, as you suppose, entirely to see his mother. He may come to see you: but, supposing he does, if he is like other men, he may not know his own mind yet: and, there is another possible thing—a thing which is possible, Margaret, though he is such a dear and intimate friend—that he may not know yours—all its strength of affection, all its fidelity, all its trust and power of self-control.”

“Oh, stop; pray stop,” said Margaret. “You frighten me with the thoughts of all you have been saying this evening, though I could so entirely satisfy you as to what our intercourse has been—though I know Mr Enderby so much better than you do. You need warn me no more. I will think of what you have said, if I find myself doubting whether he comes to see his mother—if I find myself listening to what others may suppose about his reasons. Indeed, I will remember what you have said.”

“Then I am glad I ventured to say it, particularly as you are not angry with me this time.”

“I am not at all angry: how could I be so? But I do not agree with you about the fact.”

“I know it, and I may be mistaken.”

“Now tell me,” said Margaret, “what you suppose Morris meant when she said what you heard about the pleasure of solitude depending on one’s thoughts being happy or otherwise. I know it is a common old idea enough; but Morris does not know that; and I am sure she had some particular instance in view. Morris does not make general propositions, except with a particular case in her mind’s eye; and she is a wise woman; and we think her sayings are weighty.”

“It struck me that she had a real probability in her mind; but I did not think it related to Mr Enderby, or to anything so exclusively your own concern.”

“No; I hope not: but what then?”

“I think that Morris knows more of life and the world than you, and that she does not anticipate quite so much happiness from Hester’s marriage as you do. Do not be distressed or alarmed. She means no mistrust of anybody, I imagine; but only that there is no perfect happiness in this life, that nobody is faultless; and no home, not even where her young ladies live, is quite free from care and trouble. It would not hurt you, surely, if she was to say this outright to you?”

“Oh, no; nor a good deal more of the same tendency. She might come much nearer to the point, good soul! without hurting me. Suppose I ask her what it was she did mean, to-night or to-morrow, when she and I are alone?”

“Well! if she is such a wise woman—. But I doubt whether you could get her nearer to the point without danger of hurting her. Can she bring herself to own that either of you have faults?”

“Oh, yes: she has never spared us, from the time we were two feet high.”

“What can make you so anxious as to what she meant?”

“I really hardly know, unless it be that where one loves very much, one fears—Oh, so faithlessly! I know I ought to fear less for Hester than ever; and yet—.”

The door burst open, and the foot-boy entered with his jingling tray, and news that the sedan for Miss Young was at the door. What sedan? Margaret had asked Mrs Grey for hers, as the snow had fallen heavily, and the streets were not fit for Maria’s walking. Maria was very thankful.

Here was an end of Maria’s bright holiday. Mr Grey’s porters must not be kept waiting. The friends assured each other that they should never forget this day. It was little likely that they should.

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